


looks on tempests and is never shaken

by concernedlily



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Casual Sex, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Outer Space, Sentient Atlas, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, background Allura/Lance, brief Keith/other and mentioned past Keith/other, disaster shiro, past Shiro/Curtis - Freeform, season 8 epilogue compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 03:25:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 50,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19142587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: Allura’s return announces itself rudely, like a baseball bat to the back of the head. “Oh,” Shiro says, amazement battling it out with pain as he goes down, and by the time his crew have shaken and slapped him back to consciousness Atlas is mecha for the first time in half a decade.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ataraxetta, as always, for the usual <3 <3 <3

Allura’s return announces itself rudely, like a baseball bat to the back of the head. “Oh,” Shiro says, amazement battling it out with pain as he goes down, and by the time his crew have shaken and slapped him back to consciousness Atlas is mecha for the first time in half a decade.  
“Some of you enjoyed that more than I think necessary,” he says, as casually as he can manage, wiping cold water out of his face and pushing back the damp-grey fringe, and as he’d hoped his calm starts to ease the shocked atmosphere of the bridge. People turn back to their stations and the alarms start to go thankfully silent, but he can still feel the febrile excitement around him at the novelty and wonder of Atlas’ enormous robot form, the gentle movement of the ship in space as she stretches her legs and wings.

It’s lucky he’s able to set a good example more than he’s feeling like one. His head is aching, and he lets Veronica help him to her chair and bring him a drink, staring without seeing at the urgently flashing orange lights of her console. He can hear Atlas again, quintessence glimmer in the corners of his vision, and as she hugs herself joyfully close to him in his mind he thinks, _Hi, baby. Welcome back._

“Orders?” Iverson says quietly and Shiro glances over at him, seeing the mirror of his own rapidfire scanning of scenarios in the creases of Iverson’s forehead. He’d taken on the helm after Coran left to help New Altea get onto its feet, supposedly temporary the whole time; every six months he says he’ll stay on just for another six months. It’s probably past time for him enjoy a well-earned retirement, and God knows Shiro has two impeccably-trained back-ups desperate for their chance, but their mission of peaceful exploration and diplomacy on behalf of the Galactic Coalition is important, enough to wear heavier on Shiro every day; he can’t insist anyone leaves it when they don’t want to.

A low ringing starts on the bridge: the rarely-used special line for Earth Coalition Representatives Commander Sam and Professor Colleen Holt, the Unified Earth Government and IGF Command, and the former paladins of Voltron.

“Establish a wormhole to Earth,” he says. “We better get home.”

***

A call comes through on his personal line and he rolls over on the bed, now-tepid washcloth slipping from his eyes, and answers without looking.

“Takashi?” Curtis says, and he takes a deep breath and wipes the washcloth over his aching forehead before he brings it down and smiles weakly into Curtis’s worried face. Atlas lets him know they’re out of the wormhole and accelerating into Earth’s solar system. She also lets him know she’s wondering who’s calling him, a sense of lively curiosity and nosy protectiveness in his mind, and he’s glad to realise he’d missed this; missed her, his beautiful babe-in-the-woods of a massive warship, and he transmits familiarity and reassurance before she slips away to focus on finishing off their journey and landing them safely on Earth.

“Hi,” he says. “You heard?”

“Only just. Four of the lions are here. Pidge and Hunk are on base, Lance is on his way.” Curtis sounds tentative, and Shiro thinks bittersweetly of learning all the shades of his voice, not just the calm, slightly stolid way he’d reported in on the bridge so many months before they’d got together, the way he sounds now a discordance of a personal tone with a professional message. 

“And the Black lion?” Shiro says.

“Yeah,” Curtis says. “Black too. We’ve heard from the Blade of Marmora, Keith and Black will be here as soon as they can find a Coalition base to wormhole them in.”

“Busy day,” he says, reaching for something else to say. He can’t be sorry to have Atlas back, even if it puts him back here right in the middle of whatever universe-altering shit is going down, but he wishes it hadn’t been this that Curtis was getting in touch abou: the life as a paladin that Curtis hadn’t known much about, that had always been a black hole in their relationship.

“Oh, sure,” Curtis says. There’s a pained silence. 

Shiro wonders at how it can have become this hard to talk to the person he’d once imagined the conversations with would stretch the whole rest of his life, just as he had after his first complete failure at a relationship. It’s like a fog between him and any words at all, polite small talk stuck in the mindset of receptions and meetings and diplomatic niceties, anything deeper unthinkably raw, and he smiles awkwardly at the screen and drums his fingers beneath it. He rubs his thumb over where his ring used to sit, the slight indent it had started to create after three years already smoothed out.

“Takashi, when you get back… we should talk,” Curtis says, subdued. Shiro isn’t sure what there is left to talk about: both of their divorce papers were signed and filed weeks ago, and that’s it done. It was even quicker and easier than the wedding had been, and that had been a rush job, barely a year after they’d started dating. At least they never had got around to getting the cosy off-base house and dog they’d talked about in those early days; work had taken over and somehow they’d never quite made time to build that life together.

“Let’s,” he says. “I’ll see you soon, Curtis.”

There’s an audible space where the _I love yous_ would once have been, and then Curtis ends the call. Shiro flops back onto the bed and presses the washcloth hard over his pounding temples.

***

Shiro has barely landed at the Garrison and got out of the Atlas before Red and Blue are landing too. Lance dissolves into tears as soon as he sees them and the three of them surround him immediately. The base is secure, of course, but this is major news - Shiro’s already seen blurry pictures on social media of the four lions breaking into atmosphere and separating to find their pilots - and there might be some unscrupulous member of staff willing to risk the big bucks by getting a photo of the Blue Paladin breaking down. Lance and Allura’s love story is considered a tragic romance of the ages, now; Shiro’s never watched them, but he knows there’s movies and books, and it even ended up in that stupid cartoon.

A tragedy with a happy ending. God, Shiro hopes for them.

“She’s out there,” Lance keeps saying, overwhelmed and joyful, and the four of them squash even tighter together in a glad embrace. “God, I can’t believe it. When I saw the lions, I couldn’t believe it, I thought I was dreaming again, you guys, _she’s out there_.”

“Do the lions know where?” Shiro asks. He and Pidge and Hunk had huddled together as soon as the Atlas had landed, Pidge beaming from ear to ear and Hunk looking soft and affectionate, so he knows the lions had conveyed to them that they’d been guarding the princess, and have returned to their paladins now that she’s well and that duty is done; but they hadn’t known where to find her. Pidge had described a sense of confusion at their trying to even ask the question. But Blue had been Allura’s lion, close to her in mind and spirit, and Shiro is holding out hope she’ll know more.

“No,” Lance says, and Hunk smiles tolerantly as Lance dries his eyes on the apron Hunk’s still wearing. “Neither of them were sure. I think we should go to New Altea, make sure Coran knows, maybe he can help.”

“What’s Keith’s ETA?” Pidge says. She glances at Shiro automatically and he feels the familiar jab of regret as he shakes his head, not knowing the answer.

“I guess we can wait a little,” Hunk says. “Come on inside. I’ll make us all lunch.”

***

Black flies in while they’re eating. Shiro knows Keith’s typically on the fringes of known space, helping planets too small or technologically unadvanced or crushed by the Galra to participate in the universe-wide economy. He must’ve used her teleport to get to a Coalition world with wormholing ability so fast, and Shiro aches a little at his own memories of piloting Black with so much desperation. It’s unconscious to reach for Atlas again; she’s in the Garrison hangar, back in ship form and quiescent, but just feeling the spark of life in her is enough.

He stands when Keith comes into the room, but Lance is the one Keith zeroes in on. They hug hard, Keith whispering something in his ear. When they part Lance is teary-eyed again but they’re both wearing brilliant smiles. It’s so good to see Keith smiling, so good to see him at all, and Shiro lets himself indulge in a long look as Keith turns to him next.

“Hi,” he says and closes his eyes as they hug, brief and tight. Keith has gotten taller again and the weight of his head on Shiro’s shoulder for just a second gives Shiro a nostalgic pang, as it always does, of the way teenaged Keith had fit under his chin. Keith’s all grown up now: he’ll be twenty-seven in a few months but Shiro hasn’t been with him on his birthday since the Castle of Lions. 

Today he’s comfortable and confident in the wraparound senior Blades uniform, long dark hair pulled back and making Shiro’s fingers itch with a skin-need to know if it’s as soft as it used to be, the angles of his face refined into elegance with age. His eyes are Galra-yellow, pupil slitted: Shiro wonders, startled, when that had happened, but they’re full of fondness as Keith steps out of Shiro’s arms and greets Hunk and Pidge with no less affectionate embraces. As he takes his place at the table they start to mist and fade into the familiar purplish blue, until Shiro isn’t even sure if he’d seen what he thought he had. 

“All of us here again,” Keith says, accepting the sandwich and homemade chips Hunk hands to him.

“And soon Allura too,” Lance says, low and heartfelt, and Hunk puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles at him.

“So what’s the plan?” Keith says. “Do we even know how to find her?”

“Not quite,” Pidge says, and as ever she’s immediately off into one of her magic/science explanations. Shiro just about follows, and the upshot seems to be that after Allura had sacrificed herself to restore the realities, background quintessence in the universe had noticeably dropped. Now it’s back, as if a dam has broken and everything flooded out. 

They’re not sure whether Allura has been released with it or whether she’s the cause of it, but it’s apparently fascinating (“although of course the most important thing is that we get Allura back,” Pidge says hastily, when Lance bristles with indignation). But the nature of quintessence means it’s everywhere and so there’s no real way of telling where it happened or where Allura might have ended up (“yet,” Pidge says, shining with science problem-solving enthusiasm).

Shiro figures he knows everything he needs to now; he doesn’t need to fully get it to understand they need to go out and search for Allura, but by the end he’s feeling pretty dazed. He shakes his head a little as if that’ll help everything Pidge has said settle in there and catches Keith’s eye accidentally, relaxing when Keith shrugs at him and they share a brief smile.

“Next stop New Altea?” he says, remembering just at the last minute to make it a question. The hierarchies of Voltron and its interactions with the Garrison had always been fluid, if not made up on the fly, but he’s definitely not a commander here and only Hunk and Pidge are even vaguely under Earth’s influence. He looks to Lance for approval instead, and out of the corner of his eye sees that Keith is doing the same.

“To the lions!” Lance says, bounding up, then pauses and looks back at them. “Wow. It feels good to say that again.”

“It really does,” Keith says, smiling. 

But he hangs back a little as they leave chattering brightly, and grabs Shiro’s wrist when he turns to follow.

“It’s good to see you,” Shiro says, warmed through at Keith wanting them to share a moment, but Keith is suddenly looking pale and unhappy and Shiro checks the others are gone before he leans in closer to hear his conspiratorial murmur. 

Keith smells of some rich spice, heavy and alien: Shiro has an odd moment of dissonance, as if looking into a mirror and seeing his past self, the one that used to sit on his hoverbike in the desert, capping off another race with Keith with the two of them fantasising about piloting Earth’s ships all the way outside the solar system. That was then, and this is now: they’re both recognised figures throughout the universe, on another new planet every day, and sometimes Shiro needs this kick to remember how fucking awesome it is.

“We obviously have to go find her,” Keith says. “I can’t say this to Lance, but we have to be thinking about what else we what might find, too.”

It’s what Shiro has been trying not to dwell on, not in this first flush of excitement of Allura returned, Atlas whole again, the lions back with their paladins. He’s never really understood what Allura did to save them all; he doesn’t even think Pidge does. But they know that the rifts in realities can be dangerous. If Allura has come back to them through a breach somewhere, from anything even a little like the quintessence field that had corrupted Honerva and Zarkon, there’s no telling what other effects it might have had on Allura herself, as well as the universe.

“We’ll be ready,” he says. Keith searches his face then nods tightly and spins on his heel to leave, Shiro following on behind.

***

Shiro had expected that Coran would be overwhelmed to see the lions again, had been ready with a hanky for the inevitable tears and snotty nose, but he’s even more affected by what actually happens. Coran is waiting for them when they land at the council complex, still in his pajamas with his moustache uncharacteristically uncombed, and when Shiro steps out of the red lion beside Lance and Romelle he’s on his knees, his face buried in his hands. 

With unspoken agreement they stop and wait for Lance to be the one to go to him. He bends over Coran and takes his hands gently, helping him up and speaking to him, and Coran’s joyful cry is echoed by the lions roaring, one by one as they used to, the sound filling Shiro with fierce exultation.

Coran’s tears are silent, flowing down his face as he embraces them all in turn, repeating, “Are you sure? My Princess is coming home to us?”

“We’ll bring her back to you and her people,” Shiro swears, clasping Coran’s shaking hands in his. He’s thought deeply about his final precious conversation with Allura many times in the last few years but he would have traded it in a moment for Coran to have got his own goodbye with his beloved daughter. Even with Keith’s warning still in his head, he can’t help but want to give Coran that reassurance.

“Coran, I need to talk to your alchemists,” Pidge says firmly, grabbing his arm and starting to tow him back to the council chambers, evidently having decided there’s been enough crying. “We need to isolate and map the quintessence surges to develop a sector-by-sector search probability logarithm -”

They’re off. Shiro glances at his datapad and says to one of Coran’s hovering, smiling aides, “Can you take me to your Comms centre? I need to let Earth know what’s going on.” He glances around at Keith. “Do you need to get in touch with the Blades?”

“No, it’s fine. Can you ask Sam Holt to let my mother know what’s going on?” Keith says, but he’s distracted, preparing to jog after Lance and Hunk, who are walking off with purpose, in the direction of the massive statue of Allura. Shiro really hopes she likes it.

“Sure,” Shiro says to fresh air, feeling obscurely disappointed. He watches after Keith for a minute before he turns to follow the aide, arm-in-arm with Romelle now, inside.

***

If Pidge went to talk to the alchemists Lance obviously spent the afternoon with the party planners, Shiro realises as he walks that night into the ballroom, as high and light and glorious as a medieval Earth cathedral. With less than a day’s notice the Alteans have pulled together a grand celebration, solely marking the return of the lions just now; their belief that Allura is out there waiting for rescue is being kept strictly need-to-know. Still, there’s a nod to it in the glorious fuschia and turquoise spiral galaxies hanging by some mysterious Altean means in the soaring reaches of the ballroom, shooting stars crossing the great expanse every few moments, softly lighting a reception full of what seems to be all New Altea and half the great and the good of the Galactic Coalition. 

“Drink, Shiro?” Krolia says, striding up to him with a glass of nunville in each hand, and Shiro smiles and gives her a swift hug. She and Kolivan are based on Earth part of the time, splitting most of their time between Daizabaal and other major Galra bases, and he knows she manages to visit with Keith and the Blades regularly. He sees her much more than he does Keith, at this point; he wouldn’t describe them as close, and God knows she has enough to worry about without helping him out, but she has a residual affection for Earth and she’s always a valued voice of reason and guidance to him.

“Thanks, I think,” he says, accepting the drink with a clink and a swig, the nunville going down as horribly and very alcoholically as ever. She’s wearing her formal Blades clothes, which at least helps Shiro feel not too horribly underdressed in his black-trimmed IGF uniform when Coran is holding court across the room in very tight glittery pants, a resplendent silver shirt, and a scarlet cape. “You heard the full story?”

“I did,” she says, glances around them and draws him a little further into the corner. “Of course, it’s wonderful to get Allura back, but -”

“We need to be ready for anything that’s come back with her?” he says, smiling wryly. “You sound just like your son.”

Her purple eyes flash with pleasure: so controlled about everything else, she can never hide how much she loves her place in Keith’s life being acknowledged. 

“I know he’ll be glad to spend time with you,” she says. “He misses you all.”

Does he, Shiro thinks. Seeing Keith again, in a more private setting with the paladins and the odd family they’d made together around Voltron, has made him wonder, and brought into sharp relief how much he’s missed them all too. He’d been as guilty as any newlywed of nesting, hasn’t spent as much time with other people in recent years as he should, and their company today has made him sharply aware how much he’s missed easy friendship.

“Pidge is working on it,” he says, and she gives him one of her inscrutable smiles and heads off.

With that conversation in mind, he decides to be self-indulgent for once. Usually at any kind of event with so many senior people he’d be going around making sure everyone had had a greeting from a representative of Earth, having the same stultifying conversation about either the Atlas’s stats, the new Central Bank, or the Coalition’s most recent and upcoming decisions over and over again, but he can see a number of Terran colleagues working the room. He can take a night off, and he very much wants to.

Lance is glued to Coran’s side, wearing a bright red cape of his own and a very strange tall hat, and Pidge is off somewhere blissfully working, so he fetches up with Hunk and Romelle. He’s never quite asked what Romelle is doing these days: certainly on the face of it she’s one of the support chefs working with Hunk on his culinary diplomacy, but just a few months ago Shiro had met her in Atlas’s canteen on an early morning and innocently asked for eggs over easy which she’d utterly failed (he’s not even sure she’d known what an egg was), so he thinks it’s better all around if he doesn’t ask after her actual role.

“You look nice,” he offers to them both, taking a seat at the round table they’re at without waiting to be asked.

“Thank you, Shiro, this is a traditional Altean master chef’s outfit,” Hunk says. “I’m excited for you to see the canapes! I think you’ll enjoy the bartlartlets chutney, _and_ a sheborgan cheese and purple pepper cracker. New recipe.”

“Sounds great,” Shiro says. “They really pushed the boat out.”

“Yeah,” Hunk says, gazing out over the crowd with a wistful smile. “I forget how much Voltron means to people out here, you know? I’m thrilled to see Yellow again, don’t get me wrong, I missed him a lot, but seeing how many people want to enjoy it too, it’s amazing.”

Shiro puts his hand out impulsively and Romelle and then Hunk cover it with theirs, looking surprised and pleased. “They’ll be even happier when Allura is home,” he says. “We’ll find her.”

The conversation flows from there, both of them eager to reminisce and chatter, like breaking down a wall. Even as he enjoys the camaraderie it hurts him to realise there was a barrier there at all; is he really so inaccessible even to people like Hunk and Romelle who’ve been on Atlas on and off for years? Over the next hour they talk about Allura, Lance, Allura and Lance, safari holidays throughout the galaxy, the unforgivable kitchen provision on the new generation of IGF transports, cheesemaking techniques of the Republic of the Former Galra Empire, New Altean festival vestments, and Ryan Kinkade’s latest award-winning IGF documentary. 

It’s all interesting but he can’t hide losing the thread of the conversation entirely when he finally glimpses Keith. He’d wondered if Keith had even shown up, but when he sees him across the room Keith is smiling in the dim light, holding a nearly-empty glass, the chest wrap of his uniform discarded and leaving him in the tight bodysuit that lovingly hugs the lean curving musculature of his chest and arms and back, his hair shaken out black and silky and loose over his broadened shoulders. He doesn’t look as uncomfortable as he once would have been in such a room. As Shiro watches he finishes off the conversation he’s having, makes the business card of what Shiro knows to be one of the biggest philanthropists in New Altea’s quadrant disappear into his uniform, then drains his drink and stretches, cracking out his neck and looking around the room. 

“Uh, Shiro?” Hunk says, and he drags his attention back to them before he can get caught gazing, smiles, eats the canape in he’s holding like he hasn’t squashed it almost beyond edibility in the strong fingers of his Altean hand.

“I didn’t realise Keith was here yet,” he says. “We should say hello.”

“Oh, I think you’ve missed your chance,” Romelle says sympathetically. The table rocks a little, as if someone’s kicked a table leg, and she glares at Hunk briefly. “He’s been here for a while, I think he’s done all his circulating.”

“He’s still here,” Shiro says, unsure what she’s getting at, and when Hunk coughs uncomfortably he searches Keith out again in the crowd. “- Oh,” he says, because now Keith is talking to a tall handsome Altean, with skin like Allura’s and hair like Coran’s and yet still somehow making a bright pink cape look good, and Keith’s body language is inviting and intimate where before it had been businesslike.

“I think he’s just going to get better acquainted with that guy,” Hunk says, after a minute. “So, did you see the latest movie about the rebel forces? I thought the actor playing Matt was really -”

“I didn’t see it,” Romelle says. “I think Keith and that man are going to go off and fuck, actually.”

“Yes, thank you, Romelle, that’s actually what I was talking about,” Hunk says. His gaze slides to Shiro and Shiro makes a split second decision between hiding his smile and letting it free, deciding on the latter, although from the way Hunk sidles back in his chair it’s not the best smile he’s ever managed.

“Oh yes, he’s much in demand as a partner,” Romelle announces. Hunk picks up the bottle of nunville on their table, squints at the label, and pours the rest out for himself, followed by pointedly stealing the last inch in Romelle’s glass. “He’s very skilled.”

“Oh my god,” Shiro mumbles. It’s been six months since he and Curtis stopped sharing a bed, and it was nine before that that the sex had dwindled to almost nothing, and his body awakens with interest at a light breeze, never mind Romelle talking so frankly about Keith. He’s had a healthy appreciation for Keith’s honed fighter’s body since he stepped off an Altean pod and back onto the Castle two years grown, and now he’s four glasses of horrible Altean spirits in and lonely. 

Without meaning to he’s helplessly imagining it, more vivid and immediate than ever before. How all of Keith’s strength and lithe elegance and focus would translate into passionate, athletic sex. The way he’d look and sound and feel under Shiro’s hands. Whether all that intensity gets concentrated and hungry, or whether he’s one to soften with his partners; what it takes to make him laugh in bed.

He looks back over and Keith’s paramour for the evening obviously agrees. The two of them are moving as an unmistakable pair, the Altean’s hand resting proprietarily on the small of Keith’s back. As Shiro watches, the crowd swallows them up, but they were going towards the exit to the guest quarters he and the paladins had been shown to earlier that day, and he can fill in the rest for himself.

Either luckily or very much not, Shiro’s x-rated reverie has taken barely a split second in the rhythm of the conversation. “How do you know?” Hunk is saying, as if sourcing Romelle’s pronouncement is going to make it more bearable.

She says, “Veronica told me.”

“Keith and Veronica?” Hunk says, too shocked to even stop Romelle from swiping his glass.

“Well, it ended some time ago, but it lasted quite a while,” Romelle says thoughtfully. “Her opinions are well-informed. Don’t tell Lance, though, he still doesn’t know.”

Shiro sighs and holds his hand out and she gives him Hunk’s glass. There’s barely a mouthful left, but he drains it anyway, welcoming the sour kick to the tastebuds followed by the characteristic sensation of his whole brain being on fire. “Wouldn’t dream of mentioning it to anyone.”

***

Shiro isn’t the only one visibly suffering at the meeting Pidge calls the next morning, although he’s unfairly irritated to see Keith looking tousle-haired and loose-hipped. Kosmo is with him now and Shiro sighs and pets his thick fur when the wolf blinks over to say hello. 

“Careful,” Keith says, coming over behind him, the warning coming just a moment too late: Kosmo has already given Shiro a coolly measuring stare, and proceeded to eat half of Shiro’s Altean-pork sandwich right out of his hands. “Hey! That’s rude.”

“It’s okay,” Shiro says, squinting up at him. He offers Kosmo the last, drool-covered bite and Kosmo takes it daintily from the palm of his hand. “It was my second one anyway.” He pats his stomach, which is still pretty good but not quite as taut as it used to be; he’d relaxed his workouts when he was married, trying to carve out more time to spend with Curtis, and now he’s not anymore he’s finding, dismayingly, that it’s harder to spring back into condition than it had been in his twenties. 

Keith runs an assessing stare over him, slow enough that Shiro feels his cheeks start to heat, and says, “I don’t think you need to worry about being out of shape.”

“Uh,” he says, their gazes locked, his stomach reeling with more than the hangover, and then Coran stands up at the head of the table and shouts, “Pay attention, paladins!”

Shiro pays close attention as Pidge and Coran set out a plan for how they’re going to search for Allura: they have a method for narrowing down the search field, but it will likely still leave them with a dozen possible sectors. 

Pidge says, “The thing is we can’t split up. We can build a device to track the trajectory of the quintessence surges, but getting to the source we assume is Allura is going to take the sensitivity of all five lions, and the Atlas’s capability to lock onto them, which was modelled on the Castleship. This search, it could take a while. I can do my job from anywhere with a link back to the Coalition networks, and Hunk and Lance can take time out from their usual work indefinitely…”

She leaves it hanging there. Coran’s gaze is pinned anxiously on Shiro and Keith and when Shiro looks around Lance is looking at him too, full of hope, the Altean markings under his eyes a pure clean white.

“So can I,” Keith says. “The Blade learned during the years of war not to let anyone become indispensable. They won’t miss me.”

“Good,” Pidge says. “Keith, you’ve always had a special affinity for quintessence. You’ll be useful.” She says it very matter-of-factly, as if it’s taken as read amongst them, but Keith looks up at her, startled, his pretty mouth twisted into something hurt. It pulls at Shiro and then he realises there’s no reason he shouldn’t show that, show Keith he’s behind him; he reaches over to rest his hand on Keith’s shoulder, the way he so often used to. Keith glances at him sharply, eyes indigo under a veil of long dark lashes, but he relaxes a little under Shiro’s touch, fast, as if the response comes from beyond his conscious control.

Shiro wants so badly to be able to offer the same assurances as Keith has. Atlas feels like his, more again now than since the loss of her mecha form, and he wants to be able to offer her as freely as his friends are giving of themselves. But she has a mission, a crew, and as attached as he is to her as her captain, she’s a Coalition flagship on loan from Earth’s authorities. 

“I’ll do everything I can to persuade Earth,” he says. “A lot of the Coalition representatives will back me, especially with the lions involved. And our diplomatic work can be done on planets within the search parameters as well as anywhere else.”

“Thank you, Shiro,” Lance says, sincerely, and Shiro smiles at him. There’s a push on his shoulder and he swings round to see Kosmo, giving him that piercingly blue and judgemental gaze once again, before he ducks his head and rests against Shiro’s chest with a low snuffle. Shiro starts to stroke him almost on autopilot, even his bigger Altean hand not quite stretching across Kosmo’s massive head, enjoying the easy affection from the wolf. When he looks up Keith is watching them, bright eyes wide; when Shiro tries a tentative smile at him he looks away.

“How long will it take you to get that permission, Shiro?” Coran says, loudly enough to make Shiro suspect uncomfortably it’s not the first time he’s asked.

“I’ll make it quick,” he says decisively, standing up. Kosmo comes and nudges his side again, offering, and he nods at the room and grasps Kosmo’s fur to be transported to the Altean Comms centre.

***

It’s not for Shiro to say that Pidge and Coran majorly oversold their timescales. However, he does secure permission in principle for Atlas to join the mission by early afternoon, subject to a written proposal he has complete an hour later and signed off an hour after that, only to be told it’s going to be another two days at least before their Allura-finding tool (it has another name, but Shiro’s not going to pretend he’s going to learn it; he’s spent enough time as captain of the five hundred people of Atlas’s full complement to know what he doesn’t need to know) will be ready.

He’s never really spent much time on New Altea. They have their dinner every deca-phoebe, of course, but Shiro usually drops in and out for those; he’s never explored, never got to know the revived planet or people from which Voltron sprang. He’ll need to go back to Earth to get the Atlas and bring her through to meet the lions, but his crew know their jobs and if there is a little time he wants them to have the opportunity on home base to put things in order, ready for a mission where they might not make it back for a while. He can spend some time soaking in Altea, which has all the serene green-and-blue beauty of the mountains and lakes of his birth country.

A bit of asking around with Coran’s assistants, and he’s secured an offer of a machine that looks and handles very much like an Earth hoverbike to take out for a ride around the city, and that gives him an idea.

“Can I borrow two?” he asks.

***

“It’s beautiful,” Keith says, leaning over to dip his fingers in the clear stream beside them. “Most of the planets I spend time on are in a bad way. I’m glad the Altean colony has this now, after everything they went through.” 

“Allura will be proud,” Shiro agrees, trying not to stare at Keith too obviously. The end of Keith’s braid is wet where he’d run his fingers over it after playing his hands through the stream, trying to tame it after the rush of their race across the uninhabited rolling hills of the outskirts of Alforan City. There’s something fascinating about the way it drapes over Keith’s shoulder, leaving a dampening circle on the soft-looking red tunic he’s wearing over tight black leggings.

Keith sighs. “If she’s still Allura.”

“We’ll deal with that if we come to it,” Shiro says, but the days when he could reassure Keith with a few confident words are long past. 

“Lance will be devastated if we lose her again,” Keith says. He flops backwards, and Shiro looks away from the frame of the long, lean lines of his body against the grass, a more brilliant green than that of Earth, almost turquoise, dotted with the soft magenta of juniberry flowers.

“If we lose her again it won’t have been her,” Shiro says, adding after a moment’s hesitation, “and he’ll have us there to help him through it.”

Keith blinks up at him. He says, “You remember bonding? The six of us, Atlas and Voltron?”

“Of course,” Shiro says, although he’s ashamed to know that there’d been a time when he’d tried to forget it; tried not to think about living in the starspangled mindscape of a reality-defying robot lion, and sharing his mind with his fellow paladins, and science-indistinguishable-from-magic.

Allura and the lions had been gone, Atlas had been silent, and his arm hadn’t ached with alien magic any more. He’d fled to the slow, necessary work of rebuilding, back to the commonplace dreams of space exploration he’d known before the Galra had found them on Kerberos.

Keith closes his eyes and wriggles his shoulders a little, as if he’s getting comfortable. He can if he wants; he’s limned in the gold-tinged light of the just-setting sun, and they have time.

Shiro stares unseeing into the glowing horizon, picking one of the flowers and pulling restlessly at the petals. _Loves me, loves me not, loves me_ ; a stupid game. He has half a dozen folklore specialists on his ship whose whole job is to talk to people on every planet they land on and find the stupid games like that and sometimes he thinks it’s the most valuable work they do. So many cultures had been lost or lost themselves under the Empire’s control. 

“Saw you were doing some bonding with Alteans last night,” he says, casually.

Keigh laughs without opening his eyes, his lips pressing together thinly after. “What, Marador? Sure.”

“Think you’ll see him again before we leave?” Shiro says. He doesn’t know why he’s asking, he’s not sure whether he wants to know or not, but he can’t stop the words tumbling out.

“No,” Keith says, crossing his arms over his chest. He slits one eye open, looks at Shiro with it, closes it again.

“Oh,” Shiro says. He should stop there. He doesn’t have any right to ask any more. He’s going beyond anything Keith had told him about, anything Keith had chosen to have Shiro know; Keith’s going to wonder why he’s asking, maybe clam up into the stubborn shell he had when he was young, when anyone tried to get to know him more than he wanted to be known.

Shiro says, “Why not? Are you… do you prefer women for relationships?”

“No,” Keith says cautiously. He sits up, shifts so they’re facing one another, and Shiro can’t look at him. He looks down at the mauled flower in his hand instead, starts to tie another knot in the stem, and Keith takes it out of his hands. “That doesn’t matter to me. That’s... has somebody said something to you?”

“You and Veronica?” Shiro says, guiltily aware he’s repeating gossip. It’s none of his business; he shouldn’t have heard anything and he definitely shouldn’t be saying anything, but he wants to know, very much.

Keith’s eyes go round and he grimaces. “ _Don’t_ tell Lance. That was ages ago, anyway. It was never really serious. Did she tell you?”

“Romelle,” Shiro says apologetically.

Keith laughs, a little strained, mostly sweet. He’s looking at Shiro steadily now, and Shiro looks down. There’s more juniberries around them, and other plants Shiro doesn’t know; Keith picks another and drops it into Shiro’s lap and Shiro clings to it, fingernails digging into the juicy green stem and releasing a faint scent of sap, mixing with the heavy indolent scent of night-blooming flowers starting to open around them. “Oh, yeah. Did she tell you I’m slutting it up around the whole galaxy?”

“No!” Shiro says. “She didn’t. She shouldn’t be saying things like that about anybody.”

“It’s okay, I don’t think she thinks it’s an insult,” Keith says. He looks luminous, warmly touchable in the fiery red light of the setting sun, his eyes flashing purple fire catlike against it. The moons are hanging low in the pink-streaked sky. 

Shiro had been going to ask if Keith has somebody at the moment, but his mind is stuck on Keith slutting it up around the whole galaxy, which, a traitorous part of him is insisting on pointing out, Keith hadn’t actually denied. Somebody else? Somebodies, maybe. It’s none of his business, and he’s been stuck on this too long already, long enough to be cutting across friendly curiosity and into weird. 

“So you’re…” he says nonsensically, and hopes Keith will jump in.

“I’m not seeing anybody seriously right now,” Keith says. “And since you’re asking me -” his gaze moving pointedly but sympathetically to the bareness of Shiro’s left hand. He’s never got much colour, what with living on a spaceship; even the tan line is already gone.

“The divorce will be final any time now,” Shiro says and it’s almost a relief to do so. He hasn’t had to before, really. He sometimes thinks others had realised before he had that he and Curtis had been a hot flame but a fast one, but nobody had said anything; not when Curtis had first taken the promotion back onto Earth, and not a few months later, the day they’d realised they’d gone nearly a week without managing to talk, without missing one another. Nobody on Atlas is close enough to ask, even if they’d noticed.

“I’m sorry,” Keith says. His poker face is much better than it used to be; Shiro can hardly ever tell what he’s thinking now, but right now he’s visibly sympathetic. “You don’t think you’ll figure things out?”

“There’s nothing to figure out,” Shiro says, more honest than he ought to be; Keith is always so much _himself_ , and he makes Shiro want to be that too, always has. “It wasn’t anything big. Just grew apart, I guess.”

Keith and Shiro have always been comfortable with silence. Shiro toes his boots and socks off, clenching his toes in the springy grass, and lies down, watching Keith cup his hands in the stream and drink cool water out of them less than gracefully. 

“So you’re definitely not going to see Marador again,” he says after a few minutes. He’s drowsy and unguarded, thinking about not much at all, the conversation mixing in his head like unbaked dough and rising. 

“No,” Keith says, glancing back over his shoulder and then lying down next to Shiro, close enough for Shiro to feel the warmth of his body, always a little hotter than human, not close enough to touch. “Why? He was nice, if you’re back on the market. Or something.”

“God, no. Romance isn’t what I’m thinking about right now.” He sighs and shifts against the softness of the ground, brings the juniberry up to his nose and takes in a deep breath of the ripe scent. The petals feel good against his skin, velvety and alive, and he misses being touched in that moment so much he aches with it.

He probably looks weird. He brings the flower back down over his heart and jokes, “Not that getting laid doesn’t sound pretty good.”

Keith’s quiet takes on a tautness beside him and Shiro says, “Keith…” realising far too late how much it sounds like a proposition. He’s turning as red as the sun in its last drop below the horizon, hoping it’s not visible in the blue glow of his arm in the twilight, and he opens his eyes.

Keith is looking back at him, and the smile on his face is softer than Shiro’s seen in years.

“Smooth,” Keith says, chuckling, fondly, so Shiro’s pretty sure at least he’s not going to get a punch in the face or something even while he’s dying inside with mortification. “And I thought bringing me out here was just for old times’ sake.”

“It was,” Shiro blurts, trying to figure out what to say to make this right -

And Keith kisses him. Just leans over him and kisses him and Shiro should stop this, explain the misunderstanding, but Keith kisses him like he’s happy, and it’s so long since anyone has touched Shiro affectionately, intimately. Shiro is startlingly, ecstatically aware of everywhere they’re touching, Keith’s warm hand on his chest and his wet open mouth against Shiro’s and inevitably, wonderfully, Shiro’s hands in his hair, winding through the silky strands and holding Keith close.

Kissing Keith is like trying to land on unfamiliar terrain, through fog, with one engine out, and Shiro doesn’t know whether that’s Keith or him; he doesn’t know how the hell he got here or whether he’s going to make it out, but damn if it isn’t a rush. He’s hard already in his pants just from this. It’s unseemly fast, if not actually embarrassing, but his whole being feels alive, almost raw, like waking up in a brand new body and shuddering at nothing but the pure taste of cool air on a sharply drawn breath. 

Keith is straddling him now, kissing him with slow concentration, learning Shiro as quick and instinctive as he learns any new spacecraft he can get his hands on. Shiro’s a fool for it, for him, the moment Keith’s tongue teases gently between his lips, his thumb on Shiro’s cheek brushing carefully against the edges of the scar there. He’s not sure who’s the one to bring their hips together, maybe it’s him pushing up helplessly just as Keith presses down, and he moans raggedly, pulling Keith into a deeper kiss to try to muffle it, when he feels that Keith’s hard against him too.

“Hey,” Keith murmurs, nuzzling at his cheek, and just when Shiro is about to squirm at the absurd sweetness he’s arching instead, crying out as Keith grips tight and with absolute confidence between his legs. 

“God, you’re hard,” Keith says and Shiro would’ve said he’s seen all the shades of Keith over the years but the satisfied and horny rasp of his voice is new, strange, beautiful. “Big, huh? Figured you would be,” and Shiro is, at least under Keith’s hands he is, need pooling hot in his hips and aching in the trapped length of his cock.

There’s really nothing a guy can say to that, though, without being either obviously disingenuous or unattractively boastful. Shiro just groans again instead, which isn’t difficult when Keith’s hands are on him through his pants, greedy, like he’s learning the size and shape and warmth of Shiro’s erection.

Keith catches his eye and for a moment this isn’t a weird, probably ill-advised, wonderful encounter with his best friend: it’s just another objectively stupid thing they’re doing _together_ , major risk for major reward, smiles passing between them only the two of them understand, and he says, “Keith,” and only that, because that’s the only thing in his head.

He’d worried that having sex with someone else after Curtis would be too weird. The first time with him they’d only been dating a few weeks and it had been hard not to remember Adam. With Keith, though, it’s like he’s all there is: Shiro runs his hands up Keith’s thighs where they’re splayed lewdly over Shiro’s hips and anchors them at Keith’s mouth-wateringly slender waist like falling into Keith’s arms after Allura had taken his essence from the black lion, every sensation new and shocking.

“We’re doing this?” Keith says, softly. Not like teasing, like he means it, and Shiro wets his lips and manages to say, “Please.”

Keith’s eyes are stormy purple, and Shiro feels like he’s safe in the eye and seeing it raging all around, spiralling out when he loses that connection for the moments it takes Keith to arch, cross his arms over his body and pull his red t-shirt over his head and throw it away. It lands with a suspicious sound that makes Shiro think it’s going to be waterlogged and useless when they come out of this, but he’s not going to stop for anything; he’ll give Keith his clothes and go back naked if he has to, if that means he doesn’t have to so much as pause this now to fish the damn thing out of the stream.

Keith is good to look at. Shiro had known that, of course he had, but now he thinks he could spend forever studying the effect of different kinds of light on the smooth muscles of Keith’s shoulders and chest and flat stomach; the first exam will be on the shadows cast by Keith’s abs in the twilight. He’s so beautiful, and the only thing worth losing the sight of him is pulling him down again to kiss filthy and deep.

“I want you to fuck me,” he says, spreads his legs to make it as plain as he can. Keith falls heavily between them. The angle presses their dicks together harder and somehow more promising than before, getting them both making even more noise, so much Shiro thinks coming ten miles outside of the city might not have been enough.

“God,” Keith mutters. He sounds breathless and ragged, Shiro’s fearless warrior who faced down Zarkon and Sendak and the whole Galra empire and never seemed to break a sweat, and it fills Shiro with a sense of victory, the kind he _wants_ to work for rather than merely must at all costs. He sits up again, gazing down at Shiro, and Shiro slides his hands over Keith’s hips, around to the curve of the small of his back where he’s starting to be slippery with sweat although the evening is cooling around them. Keith swallows visibly, working his hips too arrhythmically to be deliberate, and starts to unbutton Shiro’s shirt, watching his hands work with great concentration. He sighs when he has it all undone, pushing the sides away, smoothes his hands up Shiro’s chest, over the tanktop he’s wearing. 

“Rip it,” Shiro says tautly. “Touch me, I want to feel your hands on me,” and Keith glances up again, their eyes meeting again finally as he takes Shiro at his word and slices down the thin cotton with a Galra-sharp nail. Shiro moans when Keith flattens his hands on his pecs, the centre of his palms brushing his nipples, arches his back and tightens his core and thrusts up the way he would if Keith was naked and riding his cock right now. 

“I don’t have anything on me,” Keith says and Shiro clenches his ass, wanting Keith filling him so bad he’s stupidly conscious of the muscles down there. They’re talking about Keith dicking him down and he hasn’t even touched Keith yet there, and he slides his hands down to grope brazenly at the bulge under Keith’s tight pants. His cock feels big, jerks under Shiro’s hand, and Keith tips his head back and lets out an explosive breath, a shudder working its way down his whole body from his shoulders to his chest and hips, and Shiro swallows down the disappointment that he really _hadn’t_ planned this. 

“There’s oil for the bikes,” he offers and Keith blinks down at him, the furious desire on his face being rewritten with befuddlement and then a gentle amusement. 

“Yeah, no,” he says, laughs a little. “You really are hard up for it, huh? It’s okay.” He leans down and Shiro accepts the long kiss he gets in sympathy, maybe even appreciates it even more because of how much closer it makes him feel to Keith to kiss him with a chuckle still vibrating through his lips. It sounds ridiculous for this to be better than the heat of fooling around but he’s never been one for one-night stands: this is what he likes, in-jokes and intimacy and the cosiness of _us against the world_. He’s had those things with Keith before and combining them with sex as good as this already is makes this weird, surprising night something like perfection. 

“I just really want your cock in my ass,” he says, letting his voice get smoky and low. 

Keith shakes his head, bites a little at Shiro’s thumb when he strokes it over the gentle smirk of Keith’s bottom lip. “Next time. Let me take care of you.”

“Keith,” Shiro whispers, because it feels like that’s the only thing to say, and Keith closes his eyes as Shiro draws him down into yet another kiss. With the way he feels right now he could come just from that, probably, just kissing and the feeling of Keith against him and the greedy rub of their cocks in their pants. 

“Lie back,” Keith says, kisses his cheek in a moment of simple affection that makes Shiro flush, and he presses the heels of his hands over the eyes he can barely believe are seeing Keith’s dark head moving down as Keith presses kisses down Shiro’s chest, alive with purpose and promise. The strands of his chair falling over Keith’s face and tickling his skin and the little patches of warmth where Keith’s kisses fall are almost enough to distract from the desperate feeling in his cock. He reaches down around Keith’s sinuously moving body and fumbles at his pants, probably hastily enough to be impolite, but then Keith is helping him, and Shiro crams his hand over his mouth to keep from groaning too loud, breath hot and wet on the mount of Venus of his flesh hand.

“You’re gonna let me hear you,” Keith says, pulling his hand away and twining their fingers on Shiro’s stomach, gentle pressure holding his hips down as they try helplessly to twitch his cock up towards Keith’s warm breaths. Shiro looks down and Keith is staring back up at him, intently, like he’s waiting for Shiro to be watching, to be under no doubt at all what’s happening and who he’s with before he gives a devilish smile and bends excruciatingly slowly to Shiro’s hard and leaking cock.

“Oh God,” Shiro says and as Keith closes his lips just around the head of his cock and gives a meditatively slow and hard suck he collapses back so hard he’s going to have a bump on his head in the morning: it’s going to have been completely, utterly worth it. What he says next is embarrassing, revealing far too much, but it’s worth it too: “Don’t tease me,” he begs. “I can’t - Keith, _fuck_ -” and Keith glances up again at him through his dark long lashes and starts to work him in earnest, his clever wet mouth making Shiro feel so good tears come to his eyes, blurring the sparkling constellations above them into bright white nebulas. 

He’s selfishly glad of Keith’s instruction to lie back because his mouth is perfect, the spit-wet fingertip he nudges just inside Shiro’s hole wildly welcome. Shiro doesn’t think he can do anything but let the soft grass cradle him, gasping, and grasp at Keith’s hair as politely as he can possibly manage, which isn’t very when Keith is taking him apart deliberately, with satisfaction evident in every line of his body when Shiro cranes up to look at him, with the way the feel of his lips wrapped around Shiro’s dick changes like they’re stretching into a smile when Shiro is reduced to nothing but saying his name.

The sensation of orgasm starts to clench his muscles tight mortifyingly quickly and he remembers to choke out, “Keith, I’m gonna come,” and then he’s yelling as Keith squeezes his fingers down on Shiro’s and swallows his cock down, his throat constricting amazingly around the head, his sharp slightly chilly nose brushing Shiro’s stomach. He seems to go for ages, leaving Shiro a blissfully limp puddle on the ground: he’s trembling with how good it is, not so much the climax still working its way through every muscle as how nice it feels to stroke Keith’s hair as he comes down, touch his cheek and feel from the outside how he’s still softly sucking Shiro until he’s riding the edge of too-much, whisper to him how great this was. It’s been just Shiro and his left hand for months and he luxuriates in the simple pleasure of feeling like this together with someone, for someone to care enough to make him feel good, for it to be Keith. 

He probably should have got himself together a little faster to reciprocate. By the time he gets a lazy thigh around Keith’s and flips them Keith’s unexpectedly loud with his moan, rubbing himself up against Shiro hard before he stops himself with visible effort. “Come on,” Shiro says softly, hitches Keith’s leg higher around his waist, marvelling at his flexibility. “My turn.”

“You mean my turn, right?” Keith laughs, but his hips are straining upwards, his cock big and hard under the hand Shiro puts between his legs, massaging. Shiro can’t help giving into the compulsion to lean down and kiss him again, his lips moving gently over Keith’s, feeling how they’re warm and swollen from sucking Shiro’s dick. It makes him feel incredibly tender and he breaks the kiss to duck down and kiss along Keith’s jaw and throat, closing his eyes against the way they’re prickling. 

“Definitely mine,” he says, when he can, and he holds Keith’s gaze the way Keith had his when he slides down Keith’s body. Keith is completely open about it, propping himself up on his elbows to watch, and Shiro tries to look seductive instead of nervous as he pulls Keith’s leggings down. The underwear beneath is some silky alien material, a silvered lavender shade, high and tight over the flatness of his stomach and loose over the slight curve where hip becomes thigh and Shiro licks at the wet spot over the bulge of the head of Keith’s cock before he gets up the courage to pull them down too. 

Keith’s cock is as elegant as the rest of him, uncut and red with need, hard under Shiro’s touch like blowing Shiro had really turned him on. Keith is barely making any sound at all; when Shiro glances up to check this is okay he’s holding his breath, but he smiles and reaches down, pillowing his thumb on Shiro’s bottom lip. Shiro has a brief, vivid flash of Keith doing just that with his cock, just using Shiro, fucking his face like nothing else feels as good as Shiro’s mouth, and before he lets himself ask for it he takes Keith in, relaxes his jaw as best he can, slides down. 

He’s missed giving head. He’s always enjoyed it, the taste and sensation of cock heavy on his tongue, making a man fall apart, and nothing’s more motivational than the masterclass he just received and wants to prove himself equal to: that, and that it’s Keith. Keith should feel good, he should be with someone who really wants to be sucking his cock, and Shiro lets himself look as desperate and grateful as he feels as he flicks his gaze up to meet Keith’s, plays his tongue up the underside of Keith’s cock and sucks harder. 

“You look good,” Keith says softly, his voice cracking, “you look like you like this,” and Shiro closes his eyes and drops lower, taking Keith’s cock as deep as he can and then a little deeper, wanting that bit too much, to _know_ what he’s doing, to have the shadow of Keith’s dick in his throat tomorrow and the day after. 

Habit is coming back quicker than it did after his much longer dry spell after Kerberos, quick enough he stops thinking about it, falling back into the smooth rhythm of down and up, driven and adjusted to his partner’s reactions, Keith’s noises, the minute jerks of his cock against Shiro’s tongue when he does something that really works. He lets it get messy and at one point he smiles around his mouthful of cock when he feels Keith touching the wet corner of his mouth, then pressing gently on Shiro’s cheek to feel himself inside. 

Keith gets off fast enough Shiro doesn’t feel too embarrassed about his own readiness, and doesn’t have to fear for his own ability to maintain the performance that’s working for Keith. Some part of Shiro marks it and records it, carefully: the first time he tasted, heard, felt, Keith come; the first time he made Keith come. Already there’s no doubt in his mind he wants this again. 

He crawls up Keith after and collapses to his side. He wants badly to touch, if not get the cuddles and simple skin-to-skin contact he’s yearning for, but he’s suddenly shy. It feels like more to ask for than exchanging blowjobs was. 

He rests his hand tentatively on Keith’s stomach and Keith covers it with his. His eyes are closed and Shiro soaks in the changes in him, the shorter hair that’s fallen out of his braid to frame his face now tousled and decorated with blades of grass, the older, sharper, more refined angles and curves of his cheeks and chin. 

Like this he looks younger, some midpoint between the Keith of the Castleship Shiro remembers best and the man he is now; then his eyes flicker open and he looks up at Shiro and he’s guarded again. The feeling is a little like when Shiro had gone to look for his grandfather’s ofuda to take as a good-luck charm on the Kerberos mission, and realised with sick shock that between moving out of cadet quarters and in with Adam and out again from Adam he didn’t know where it was; that he’d lost something very precious and not noticed until it was far too late to even know where to start to search for it. 

“We should get back,” Keith says, and as he clambers up the grip of their hands falls away. The night is fully on them now. There’s no light pollution on Altea, not yet at least, and the clear sky is brilliantly lit with stars; Shiro thinks he can see the dim purple glow of Daizabaal rising over the horizon. 

“Sure,” Shiro says, and rolls to his knees. Doing up his pants feels awkward, even sordid, and he struggles for a moment with the stiff button of the new jeans. He hasn’t really been wearing anything other than his uniform much lately, and it’s the kind of fine motor action his arm has never quite been on human scale for. 

He glances up apologetically, trying to hurry, not to keep Keith longer than he wants. Keith is watching. He smiles at Shiro after a moment and Shiro looks down again, takes a deep breath, and the button slips into the hole. 

***

The ride back is silent, Shiro contemplating the joys of speeding through the night with the cool wind in his hair, the lazy, satisfied feeling of recent great sex in his body and probably written in contentment all over his face. 

Keith is still silent as he heads out of the vehicle hangar, which it makes Shiro as uneasy as being caught out of bounds by Officer Goodman after his first kiss with a boy whose name he’s forgotten now, hurried in a dark classroom. They all have a place to stay along the same corridor in the council building but he has to hurry to keep up with Keith; it reminds him of Keith’s long legs, which is perfectly welcome, but the feeling he’s being ditched isn’t. Shiro was thinking bashfully of inviting Keith to join him in his room, but it seems obvious that’s not where Keith’s head is; nowhere near.

“Hey,” Shiro says finally, when they’re outside Keith’s door and it looks like Keith is going to dive right on in without so much as a word. He goes to take Keith’s hand, and the realisation that previous to tonight they hadn’t had such a casual touch for years is followed straight away by Keith evading the touch with automatic skill. It leaves Shiro wondering which had come first: had he stopped reaching out, or had Keith stopped accepting the contact that had once been so natural to them both? 

Keith does turn then, looks up at him and whatever he sees in Shiro’s face makes the remote look in his eyes soften. Shiro swallows and reaches out again, slowly, and Keith lets him rest his hand on Keith’s shoulder. “I’m going to head to bed,” Keith says, his voice low. “Don’t… don’t let’s make this more than it is, okay?”

He’d asked for this, Shiro reminds himself; at least Keith thinks he had, no-strings sex on a stolen night. But they’re going to be on Atlas together, searching through deep space, for a while, what could be months, and Shiro’s whole body feels alive; his heart feels open.

“Didn’t you mention something about what we’d do next time?” he says instead, stepping in closer and putting his hand to Keith’s cheek, and Keith looks up at him with his eyes glimmering with eerie alien beauty. Shiro finds he’s almost holding his breath, waiting for an answer: if Keith doesn’t want to do this again of course he’ll respect that, but he doesn’t want it to be so just because he didn’t ask.

Keith gives a rueful laugh, scraped-sounding, and Shiro shivers from the reminder of his cock slipping so sweetly into Keith’s throat, making him sound like that. “I did, didn’t I?” Keith says and he’s the one to lean up and brush their mouths together, gently, promisingly before he turns to open his door, glancing back before he disappears inside just to say, “Okay. Okay, yeah. Next time.”

***

Shiro would have preferred next time to be the next day, preferably the next morning - as that same night is clearly off the table - but he doesn’t see Keith most of the next day. Instead he spends the morning drifting around the council building, trying his best to appreciate its beauty without falling into too much of a stupor daydreaming about the sounds Keith had made when Shiro licked the sensitive area where the head of his cock met the thick vein running up the underside. 

When Iverson gets in touch in the afternoon to confirm the final plans for the lions joining the Atlas to start the mission he’s glad of the distraction, trying not to squirm too obviously on the hard chairs in the Altean Coalition Comms centre at the ache left from Keith’s fingertip inside him the night before, more phantom than real but no less pleasant for it.

He’s glad to be summoned to dinner early. It’s not a big affair like the party the other night but more fashioned after their intimate evening as friends, about six months too early and as ever under the watchful, graceful eye of Allura’s statue.

Shiro hasn’t seen Pidge looking quite so quietly pleased with herself since the first time the Vehicle Force managed to fully combine; he’s not surprised when instead of proposing a toast, Coran stands before them and announces joyfully that the tool they’ve been building is complete. They’re ready to start searching for Allura.

Lance buries his face in his hands at the table, overwhelmed, Hunk moving to comfort him immediately. Shiro stands to hug Coran, a bruisingly tight embrace from the Altean forgetting his strength in the excitement, then Pidge. Keith catches his eye finally across the table and raises his glass to Shiro, grinning, and Shiro grins back as they toast one another and drink.

***

He’s trying not to expect the knock on the door so he’s full of excitement and relief when it comes, long after they’ve all retired to their separate beds. He’s halfway through some terrible bi-boh drama he’s not paying any attention to at all, supply lines proposals for the search getting not much more focus despite their importance.

He fusses on the way to answer: smoothing his hair, pushing his soft sleep pants down his hips to expose the beginning of the trail of soft hair down his navel, trying to look like a man who regularly chooses to relax alone barefoot and barechested.

“Hi,” he says, smiling as he opens the door, but Keith barely even looks him up and down before he’s pushing into Shiro’s arms, pulling him down into a hungry kiss. Keith tastes of the rich amber dessert wine they’d had after dinner and Shiro licks into his mouth, chasing the honey-like stickiness. It’s hard to distinguish between the sheer physical pleasure of the kiss and the high of Keith having showed up. He backs Keith gently up against the door he’s just come in through, making sure it clicks locked. Kissing Keith at this angle is new and interesting, the height he’s gained over the last few years more obvious although Shiro still has to bend slightly to kiss him, the difference in height just a couple of inches now. He settles his hands on Keith’s hips and slides his thigh between Keith’s legs, satisfied to find him already hard, moans into his mouth when Keith runs his hands over Shiro’s shoulders and twines his arms around Shiro’s neck. The way Keith’s touching him feels covetous, even possessive and God, Shiro wants that; he misses belonging to somebody.

“You still want to get fucked?” Keith mumbles when Shiro can bear to break from kissing enough to let him get a sentence out.

“God, yes,” Shiro says fervently, and flushes: he wants to get fucked bad enough he’d fingered himself earlier, stretched and lubed himself up, thinking dreamily about Keith’s cock in his mouth. He doesn’t usually bother with that when he’s masturbating and it had been like unlocking a part of himself he’d forgotten was important. It’s one of the reasons he’d found it hard to focus earlier, too aware of the soft, wet feeling of his ass. 

He can’t admit that to Keith: he’ll let him discover it for himself. Sooner rather than later, apparently, because Keith is already crossing the lounge area of the guest suite, heading for the small bedroom. It’s faster than Shiro had imagined, makes him feel confused and cold, but when Keith shoots him a smoky-eyed look from the bedroom door he still finds himself following.

He’s forgotten to turn the viewscreen off and a sudden incongruent burst of high-pitched bi-boh canned laughter floats into the bedroom after it. He turns automatically to go switch it off and Keith says, “It doesn’t matter. Come here.” When Shiro turns back to him he’s kneeling on the bed, framed by the gauzy pale blue curtains of the four-poster, his legs spread and flaunting the hardness between them, outlined in his jeans; he holds Shiro’s gaze and runs a hand down his chest, perfect as a pin-up and just as far away.

“Keith...” he says but when Keith raises an eyebrow at him he can’t think what comes next. He shakes his head and when Keith reaches for him he goes, climbs onto the bed and is grateful to be pulled into another deep kiss, drowning everything but how it feels to have Keith in his arms, to be held in return.

“You’re gorgeous,” Keith mutters, stroking over Shiro’s back. He sounds kind of angry about it and when Shiro opens his eyes and looks at him uncertainly his mouth twists into something that’s nearly a smile before he hooks one thigh between Shiro’s, and with some clever move Shiro’s going to have to have him demonstrate on the training mats some time gets Shiro on his back. He bounces on the bed, although only a little, because Altean beds are invariably too firm for human spines: he wonders if that’ll change if they get Allura back and Lance comes to live here full-time, prince to her queen.

“I know the scars are -” he starts, the words coming back from the speech he’d practiced in the mirror several times when he was first dating again. He’s not usually ashamed of them; he doesn’t usually really feel anything about them. They are what they are and there’s no point worrying about them. He’s stripped off for gym showers hundreds of times without thinking anything of it. Getting naked with a romantic partner is different, though, and he hadn’t wanted to deal with Curtis’s feelings about them, had meant to shut down any curiosity.

“You’re _gorgeous_ ,” Keith repeats, his eyes sparking, this time with anger _for_ Shiro; he can tell the difference in way Keith’s hands turn soft on his skin, stroking up Shiro’s sides. He leans in and Shiro thinks they’re going to kiss again, parts his lips in readiness for it, but Keith presses a kiss to the scar over his nose, instead, staying there, trembling under the arms Shiro wraps around him protectively. He’d forgotten that Keith knows more about his scars than anyone else, even more than he’d ever eventually told Curtis. Keith had been the one to bathe Shiro and help him dress when Shiro was practically comatose after his crashlanding back on Earth; he’d known Zarkon and the viciousness of his Empire intimately, seen the Robeast Shiro had fought in the arena: he’d met the other prisoners who’d called Shiro _Champion_.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and when Keith looks at him, his gaze finding the present again, he brings his human hand up and presses his fingertips very gently to the scar on Keith’s cheek. The one Shiro had given him, the one they’d never talked about, and when Keith closes his eyes and turns his face into Shiro’s touch, cradles Shiro’s hand cradling his cheek and then captures it and kisses those same fingertips clumsily, it feels like something precious.

He reaches for Keith and Keith reaches for him and they kiss again, slow and exploring. Something has shifted between them, the sweetness and intimacy of the riverbank back before Shiro had even known how to miss it. He whispers, “Let me see you,” and Keith takes a deep breath Shiro feels right against himself, kneels up again and takes off his shirt, pushes his sweatpants down and kicks them off. He’s not wearing any underwear and Shiro takes Keith’s hard red cock in a teasingly loose fist, bites his lip and spreads his legs invitingly.

Keith takes the invitation, setting his hands at Shiro’s waistband and rolling it down slowly. Shiro isn’t wearing any underwear either and Keith interrupts his laser focus on Shiro’s crotch to flicker his eyes up and smile, both of them momentarily joined on the exact same page. When he finally pulls Shiro’s pyjama pants off his ankles it’s the first time they’re naked together, fully bare, and Shiro tosses his head onto the pillows restlessly at how exposed he feels, drags Keith down to cover himself and kisses him, Keith’s slender warm body against his reassuring him he’s not alone.

“Oh,” Keith says and Shiro squeezes his eyes shut and moves instinctively against the gentle finger Keith has sunk between his cheeks, feeling where Shiro’s wet and ready for him. “You - already? You knew I’d come tonight.”

“I hoped,” Shiro says hurriedly. He doesn’t think Keith minds, not from the way he gasps out hard as he slides one slim finger deep inside Shiro and Shiro writhes under him in helpless response, feeling the tender muscles of his hole flutter and clench around the welcome finger, the brief burn and stretch as Keith adds another. “I didn’t want to presume, but… I hoped. I wanted you to.”

“God,” Keith breathes, nibbles at his lower lip and brushes their mouths together before kissing down Shiro’s throat. When he properly bites it’s hard but careful, leaving a mark perfectly positioned to be just below the collar of his uniform. Shiro daren’t risk the same thing - he isn’t as familiar with the necklines of the senior Blades clothing as Keith is with the Garrison jacket, and in any case he doesn’t know whether the paladins will go back to their Altean flight suits when they’re travelling with the lions - but he scratches up Keith’s back a little rougher than he would usually consider polite, revels in Keith’s ragged groan and the way he thrusts greedily against Shiro’s thigh. He pulls his fingers out of Shiro, apparently content he’s ready, rubs at his sensitive rim gently and makes Shiro let out a choked noise, cups his balls, already high and tight enough Shiro is worried for his control when Keith’s actually, finally inside him.

“You want to turn over?” Keith says, sweeping his hands up the outsides of Shiro’s thighs. He sounds businesslike, but when Shiro blinks at him he leans down and presses a kiss over Shiro’s heart, dropping sinuously low enough for his pecs to rub over Shiro’s cock, and Shiro can just see the flush over his cheeks, spreading down his chest and across his shoulders pink or maybe even purplish in the golden glow of the bedroom light.

“No, like this?” he says, uncertain again, “I want… I’d like to see you,” and he feels Keith’s muscles ripple under the hands he rests on Keith’s shoulders.

“Okay,” Keith says, the words muffled in Shiro’s chest. “Okay, that’s - show me, then,” almost a challenge, and Shiro moans with surprise and greed as he’s manhandled in a way no partner has before, Keith’s Galra strength bringing Shiro’s weight easily up and into his lap, Shiro’s thighs splayed obscenely over his to hover over the stiff, waiting length of his cock.

He would have liked to be kissing as he sinks down on Keith’s cock for the first time, but okay. He holds Keith’s gaze instead, letting everything scrawl across his face as Keith holds his cock in place and the soft wet head nudges inside Shiro’s body, so different to fingers or toys. He closes his eyes helplessly and moans when Keith holds him there, effortlessly, reaches between them and strokes Shiro’s entrance where he’s held spread around the tip. Shiro feels like he’s poised in a moment between being someone Keith’s never been inside and someone he has; the mere act of being fucked shouldn’t be transformative but somehow here with Keith it is, like a veil between realities being pushed softly aside. He’s the one being taken but Keith is the one opening up to him, his pretty face wild and wondering as Shiro bites his lip and eases down as slowly as he can bear, feeling Keith’s thickness rubbing him everywhere inside.

“You’re tight,” Keith says, “oh, that’s - yes, fuck, you’re -” and Shiro never finds out what he is because he’s snug in Keith’s lap, their bodies joined, all of Keith hard and undeniable inside him, and he gives in to his screaming desire to kiss, messy and deep and demanding.

He rides Keith hard, welcoming the burn in his thighs as a counterpoint to the mindmelting pleasure of working himself up and down Keith’s dick in a sinuous glide and the more cerebral thrill of being full of cock after so long without. Keith knows how to move too, pressing up to add an extra tiny hit of stimulation when Shiro’s deep on his thighs; he’s restless, stroking Shiro’s hips and back and shoulders, pulling Shiro back in again and again for panting openmouthed kisses.

He’s so focused on the physicality of the sex that orgasm feels like an afterthought and he cries out when Keith grabs his cock and bites down on his shoulder. “Fuck, yes,” he babbles, letting his head tip back, his rhythm breaking into abrupt hard thrusts down, squeezing uncontrollably around Keith’s cock. For a glorious moment as he comes his mind is wiped blissfully clean of everything but exactly where he is and what he’s doing and who he’s with. He can feel Keith shuddering under him, in him, feels the warmth of him coming inside Shiro’s ass, and there’s a selfish kind of gladness in that, too, a pridefulness in making Keith come. 

He lifts himself up on pleasantly sore thighs and falls inelegantly back to the bed, sighing. He feels sleepy and happy, and although he’s just come he’s already thinking of next time, maybe even in the morning, Keith inside where he’s already tender. He reaches for Keith with his eyes still closed, meaning to pull him down and cuddle in, frowns and opens his eyes when the expected clasp of his hand doesn’t come. 

Keith is kneeling between his legs, his cock still plump and wet. He’s looking at Shiro with a little crease between his eyebrows, too stressed for a man who just had sex as great as it was for Shiro. 

Shiro says, “Was that… uh,” trying to think of a way to ask if it was good without actually having to ask. It feels too revealing, too much, and when Keith bends over him for a light, sweet kiss, he throws himself into it. Keith is stroking Shiro’s stomach, rubbing Shiro’s come into his skin; it feels good, and even better, dirtier, when Keith sketches his hand between Shiro’s legs and fingers him again lightly, pushing his own leaking come back up into Shiro’s sticky soft hole. That feels intimate, not something Shiro would usually allow, but his cock tries to twitch again feebly, into it, the feeling in Shiro’s stomach somewhere between nerves and excitement. When Keith presses his thigh back and looks, _stares_ , at the place he was so recently fucking that does feel like too much, and Shiro squirms out of his hold and reaches down to pull the sheets over himself.

Keith smiles at him, a quirking little smile Shiro doesn’t think he’s seen for years. “I better go. Big day tomorrow, right?”

“What?” Shiro says. “I thought… you can stay.” He wants Keith to stay, and he blinks up at him in silent appeal.

“I think it’s better not to blur the lines,” Keith says briefly. The way he’s looking at Shiro is hesitant and then he reaches over and pushes Shiro’s bangs softly away from his forehead, pausing for a moment before he leans in to follow it with his mouth, a gentle kiss to Shiro’s temple that warms him inside after the nasty blow of Keith preferring to go.

“Oh. Sure,” Shiro says. He curls up in his cold sheets and watches as Keith collects his t-shirt and sweatpants and dresses quickly. “Sleep well,” he says as Keith looks back at him from the doorway, soaking up Keith’s smile, and then he flops back and stares at the ceiling. His mind is whirring but his body is tired and he’s grateful to fall asleep.

***

It’s an early start, squinting into the clear white sunlight and drinking his third cup of coffee - Coran had gotten a taste for it on Earth but regrettably only the most terrible freeze-dried military stores version, now sweetened with Altean flaggalag nectar, whatever that is - while they wait at a respectful distance for Coran to say his farewells to his people. Shiro tries not to wince at hearing him promise, with tears in his eyes, to bring Allura back brighter and more beautiful and better than ever; his gaze meets Keith’s behind Lance’s back and slides away again.

Keith is back in the white and red. They all are, the lions arrayed on the plaza behind them, Allura’s statue in the middle. It’s hard to look at Keith in the armour, close-fitting but moulded with its contours frustratingly independent from Keith’s own lean musculature, without remembering his warm skin under Shiro’s hands. The one redeeming feature of the Garrison jacket, which Shiro’s always felt conservative and bureaucratic in next to the paladins in their armour, is the hip length, safely long enough to conceal inconvenient physical reactions.

“Hey, Shiro -” Hunk starts after the speeches are finished and the wormhole is open and waiting.

Keith comes up behind him with Kosmo and hipchecks him gently. Hunk doesn’t move, but he looks between them and melts away to his lion.

“You want to ride with us?” Keith says, like there’s even a question, and he doesn’t move back when Shiro reaches for him this time. He moves in closer, so it’s easier for Shiro to slip his hand around Keith’s unfairly trim waist than to rest it on his shoulder, and smiles.

Shiro hasn’t stepped into Black since before they reached Earth. He can’t hear her any more, and he lets himself miss that bond for ten seconds, breathing in for four and then out for six. Her ambient noise revs up in greeting anyway, and he’s going back to meet the awakened Atlas, and it’s okay.

***

There’d been a time, not even that long ago, when Shiro had been excited to hear from Curtis, even longed for it. Today he’s not quite disciplined enough to stop a wince when Curtis’ callsign comes up on his datapad. Iverson gives him the sympathetic grimace of the thrice-divorced man to the newly-divorced and claps him heartily on the shoulder as he gets up to leave. 

Iverson and the rest of the senior crew have managed everything perfectly, as Shiro was confident they would: everything is ready for launching Atlas into the search for Allura and he’s out of excuses.

“I’m on the bridge,” he says, after he’s answered Curtis and they’ve exchanged awkward greetings. “Are you free for lunch? I’ll meet you in the canteen.”

***

At least Curtis has a high security clearance and is already aware of the true purpose of the Atlas’ new journey, issued publicly only as a longer than usual diplomatic mission to the farther reaches of known space. He’s as much an astroexplorer by nature and training as Shiro is, and he’s truly interested: between their plans for the search and Curtis’ job they’re able to stretch out a cordial conversation for about twenty minutes and generous helpings of overseasoned meatloaf.

Shiro’s guiltily aware of the noise of the thirty or forty people around them as a buffer to having to have a real talk about anything that matters. The canteen was built new after the war to accommodate the expanded IGF and its newly cross-species population, but it’s so well-used that only five years after opening it looks twenty, faded and the kind of grimy a fresh coat of paint only covers for about a week before it looks exactly the same as it used to. Curtis rattles the bottom of his knife against the table as they talk, a nervous habit Shiro had found endearing when they were first dating and which had driven him to the raw edge of irrational fury by the end of their relationship. He realises he doesn’t feel anything about it today: it’s just part of the background of the conversation, an irregular tinny drumming.

“The divorce will be finalised while you’re away, I suppose,” Curtis says eventually, quietly, when they’re finishing up their pudding cups, and things going sour won’t leave anyone going hungry. 

“Were you going to throw a party?” Shiro says. “Guess I won’t be able to make it.”

He regrets it immediately. He’d meant it as an awkward attempt at humour, but they’re not cracking shared jokes any more, laughing comfortably at the world outside from their cosy little bulwark of two: it just comes out bitter, even cruel. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean… sorry.”

Curtis’ lips are thin, and Shiro can see the deliberate decision he makes to be magnanimous. Shiro’s so bad at this, as terrible at the end of the relationship as he had been at the beginning. He almost prefers the acrimonious hard stop of his relationship with Adam than this weird transition to polite acquaintances, even though he knows it’s necessary: they’re both senior IGF personnel and they’re going to be seeing one another, if not having to actively work together, for years. It feels strange to think, though, that this could be their very last personal conversation. Curtis is much better at it than Shiro is and he hates the feeling, which had come up a lot as the downhill slide of their marriage had picked up speed, of being _managed_. “That’s okay,” Curtis says, so very reasonable, and Shiro allows himself the luxury of two seconds of childishly hating him for it. 

“We’ll still be in contact,” Shiro says, trying to be mature and practical in turn. “If there’s anything needed. Signatures or whatever.”

“Of course,” Curtis says. “I was thinking more, we’ll be. Well. Single.”

There’s a guilty shade to his voice: or is Shiro projecting that, suddenly very conscious that on his way in he’d nodded to Keith and Krolia, sharing a pre-mission family meal a few tables away? Not that Shiro isn’t still single; Keith’s made it very clear that they’re not together like that.

“Yeah?” he says cautiously. He thinks about hearing Curtis is with someone else. Seeing them together, talking and laughing in the halls the way he and Curtis used to; scrupulously formal, never touching in uniform, but their intimacy still shining out for everyone to see. He almost wishes it brought up some jealousy in him, like it feels like it ought to, after three years of marriage. Instead there’s just an apathetic relief, a tiny better angel in the back of his mind managing to be glad at the idea of Curtis moving on, finding his happiness somewhere else.

“There’s nobody else,” Curtis says hastily. “I just thought I’d mention it.”

“Okay,” Shiro says, although he doesn’t totally believe it. Curtis can be single-minded and when he’d finally explained his campaign to woo Shiro, snuggled together in bed on their honeymoon, Shiro had been impressed at the depth and detail; he hadn’t realised the half of it, even though he’d been the subject. He’s pretty sure Curtis wouldn’t be bringing it up if he didn’t have his eye on someone in particular. He adds, trying to be kind in his turn, “It’s okay if there is.”

Curtis gives him a strained smile. He really is handsome, Shiro thinks, but it’s with a distant part of himself; the feeling doesn’t reach him. He starts to collect his garbage together neatly on his tray and Curtis does the same, both of them lingering, not quite sure how to do this final parting.

“I hope you find her,” Curtis says.

“We will,” Shiro says simply. “I don’t think Lance will let us rest until we do.”

“Yeah,” Curtis says. He hesitates and goes on, “But for you too.”

“Me?” he says, surprised. He stands up and Curtis does too, picking up his tray. “Of course I’ve missed Allura, but I’m fine.”

Curtis shakes his head. “Losing the lions and Allura like that… you think I didn’t know what you were thinking about when I’d find you staring at the sky at two in the morning? You already seem brighter just being with them the last few days. You need this, Takashi. All of you do.”

And with that he’s gone. It’s a hell of a parting shot. 

Shiro busses their trays and stands for a minute staring at the detritus of lunch before somebody nudges him out of the way to slide their dirty tray onto the rack. He knows Curtis’ last words to him had been meant understandingly. He’d been there so many of the darkest nights, when Shiro couldn’t sleep and the nightmares when he could; he’d tried, and it’s Shiro’s fault he hadn’t talked in anything but the vaguest terms about the arena, dying and being reborn first in the void and then in a new body, even the disease he’d lived with up until Haggar’s cloning programme had wiped away mere human genetic weakness. 

He feels just for a moment crushingly alone, and he clasps his hands together, welcoming the ache in his flesh hand from the too-tight grip of the Altean, and concentrates on pushing the feelings off his face so he can walk out of here with some dignity.

“Shiro!” Krolia calls and that makes it easier: he’s grateful to abandon his train of thought and go to their table. She’s giving him a look of vaguely maternal concern, but the handclasp she offers him is the usual formal greeting.

“Hi,” he says, and manages a smile. Kosmo pokes at his shoulder and he gives the wolf a fond scratch, having to dig deep in the majestic white ruff around his head to manage it. He asks Keith, “Are you ready for the launch this afternoon?”

“I’ve packed my toothbrush and my lion,” Keith says and shrugs. “There’s not much more than that.”

“He has all he needs,” Krolia says. “You’ve made your farewells to Curtis, Shiro?”

“Yeah,” he says. She shifts along the bench a little, suggesting, and he sighs and sits down. “My final ones, I guess.”

“It was a surprise to me to learn about human divorce,” she says musingly. Keith is watching him; he pushes his cup towards Shiro, offering, and Shiro nods to him gratefully and takes it, letting the water washing down his throat cool and calm him. “The Galra tendency is to mate for life. There is a parting ritual, but it’s rarely used.”

“Is it combat to the death?” Shiro guesses glumly. That’s how the Galra usually settle things, and as expected, Krolia nods. At least his divorce wasn’t that bad. And at least, he thinks as he looks at Krolia, he didn’t find the love of his life in the furthest place he could’ve imagined, leave them and lose them there. He’d escorted Krolia to Keith’s dad’s grave once when Keith hadn’t been around and she hadn’t known the location on her own. Her grief kneeling in front of the grave had been quiet but as big as the world; he hadn’t known whether it was her nature or Galran, but he’d seen then that she would never stop loving her lost husband.

“Mom!” Keith says. “He doesn’t need to know about this.”

“It is banned now,” she says reassuringly, with the steel determination in her eyes she often gets talking about the vast, glacial effort to change a culture that’s held true for ten thousand years. “Mostly.”

“Urgh,” Keith says. Shiro doesn’t know how to read the way he’s looking at Shiro but he wants to stay with it, wants to soak in Keith’s attention and the quiet acceptance he’s always offered Shiro after the pain of the conversation with Curtis. “Come on. We should get back over to Atlas.”

***

The paladins stand on the bridge in front of the captain’s station for launch: with them there and Atlas shimmering at the edges of his mind it’s like old times, and Shiro loves it. Curtis wasn’t wrong that he’s always felt like there was unfinished business here. They’d lost Allura so quickly, scattered so soon afterwards instead of coming together to recover and comfort one another. Shiro had retreated into his command and the comparative simplicity of universe-wide diplomacy, and then on that first anniversary dinner when he’d hoped perhaps they could start to rekindle their bonds the lions had left, taking any hope Shiro had had of becoming closer again with them.

Coran has resumed his old post at the helm. He punches up the wormhole to their start location and as Atlas leaps joyfully forward Keith turns to Shiro and smiles.

“So what now?” Lance says at the other end, peering out of the screen with a small frown on his face. Shiro agrees it doesn’t look that promising; they’re in seriously deep space, no inhabited systems within a day’s flight even of Atlas’ impressive capabilities, the blackness outside the ship pressing in a little more oppressively than usual. 

“We said it would take legwork,” Pidge says defensively. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but this is one of the areas our scans indicated had seen effects from the quintessence surge. Now we’re here the device we built will do a high-level scan as the Atlas moves and if it catches anything we’ll hop in the lions to check it out.”

“Sounds pretty simple,” Lance says.

Pidge rolls her eyes. “Yeah, because I simplified it _for you_. It’s much more complicated than that, obviously.”

“So what do we do in the meantime?” Keith interrupts, edgily, and Hunk, still the appeaser, shoots Shiro a Look. Keith’s been heading up his own organisation, one doing a crucial job on some of the most desperate planets in the universe, Shiro reminds himself; and he’d never done that well with enforced inactivity anyway.

“Are there any long books you’ve been meaning to read?” Pidge offers. She always has her work, much of which she can figure out in her head and retain until she can get to her workshop; Shiro knows from tired experience she doesn’t really understand boredom.

“The Atlas has a pool and a training deck just like the Castle did,” Hunk says reassuringly.

“Hey, we all put up with you going back and searching for Shiro for _months_ ,” Lance says. “This is _Allura_. It takes as long as it takes!” Shiro’s still watching Keith so when he looks up at Shiro, stricken, he’s already looking. He doesn’t understand for a moment why Keith would go sickly pale and look away, and then he realises that Lance must be talking about after Shiro had died on the black lion. 

“I’m not complaining,” Keith mutters. “Sorry. It’s fine.”

Shiro remembers being told about Keith’s searching; in a way, at least. The memories of the time the clone had lived are his, he accepts them, but there’s still a remoteness to them. He thinks of them as his mirror-memories, identical to himself but wrong way round and never quite touching the real him. Even the time afterwards, the journey on the lions, feels more dreamlike than real. 

He’d known intellectually that Keith hadn’t given up hope then, hadn’t stopped looking, had heard about it from the others, but it’s only right now he realises what they’re doing now was exactly what Keith searching had meant: days and days combing deep space, desperate, except Keith had been hoping with significantly less to go on, holding only his own fading faith.

“I’m sure we’ll find ways to keep ourselves busy,” he says, lets them go into some energetic conversation about that adventure game of Coran’s, Pidge’s dwarf character and Hunk’s wizard. When he’s sure they’re all caught up he jerks his head at Keith, _follow me_.

Keith trails him into the corridor, looking irritated. “Look -” he starts, and Shiro presses him against the cool bluelit metal of the corridor wall and kisses him.

“This how you’re gonna keep me busy?” Keith says. He’s trying to sound smart, his eyebrow raised, but he’s pliant and panting in Shiro’s arms and he arches up into the hand Shiro puts between his legs with a low horny noise.

“If you let me,” Shiro promises, and pulls him into the plant room just behind the bridge, the locked door opening for him with the slightest touch to Atlas’ presence in his mind. They mark the launch that way together, breathing hard, hands in each other’s pants making each other come, kissing and kissing and kissing.

***

They get their first signal from Pidge’s device a day and a half later, in the middle of Atlas’ night cycle. Shiro’s still wet with come in his ass and dripping down his thighs from Keith putting him on his back and fucking him; it was great, apart from when Keith had walked out again after, but Shiro’s definitely cleaning up properly next time before he falls asleep. By the time he’s swiped a cold flannel over himself and pulled on a hasty half-uniform then made his way out to the bridge the paladins are in their lions and flying a systematic search pattern, swooping in and out of Atlas’ field of vision.

There’s no need for a crew, not with Atlas awake and taking a lively interest in proceedings, and Shiro had instructed that nobody else should be dragged out of their beds for an alert. Coran is there anyway and Shiro hesitates halfway onto the platform at his station. 

Coran slumps gratefully into his chair when Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder and they watch together, silently.

***

They fly back in an hour later, the signal of a possible further quintessence surge lost. The lions seem to be drooping, and as the four pilots troop into their small shared kitchen they are too.

“We’re not seventeen anymore, Shiro,” Lance snaps, and Shiro looks up from the jar of cocoa he’s opening. Lance looks near tears, exhaustion and disappointment mixing with a nasty adrenaline crash from more sustained piloting than he’s done in years. Shiro is sorry it hasn’t worked already, of course, but he’s used to playing a long game and this is barely anything he recognises as a setback. He’s just soaking up how nice it is to have the paladins’ quarters used again, his friends near, their lions safe in their hangars. 

“Fair enough,” he says, and gets the bourbon. Hunk waves him off, Pidge spikes her cocoa, but Lance and Keith - and Coran - accept healthy tumblers of booze over ice.

“To finding Allura,” Shiro says quietly, and clinks glasses with each of them in turn, checking they’re okay. “We _will_ find her.”

“We will,” Pidge says with conviction. “Our theory is sound. This was just the first try. It was always improbable we’d hit on the right place immediately.”

“I know, I know,” Lance mumbles. He chugs back half of his drink, grimacing, and hides his face in his hand. “I just want to see her, you know?”

He doesn’t last long after that, which Shiro thinks is probably for the best: Lance isn’t seventeen anymore, but he doesn’t give the impression of having much of a better tolerance for alcohol than when he was. The others head back to bed at the same time, and Shiro and Keith are left together.

“Hey,” he says softly, mindful that Hunk or Pidge might be lingering in the comfortable lounge area between the kitchen and the bedrooms, and catches Keith’s hand.

“I can’t,” Keith whispers, “they’ll notice if I don’t go to my own room,” but he’s coming into Shiro’s embrace hard, shoving his face into Shiro’s throat and sighing when Shiro cradles his head.

“Just this,” Shiro says, holding him closer, combing gently through Keith’s helmet-flattened hair. Keith pulls back and looks at him, his eyes big and his expression the most vulnerable Shiro’s seen him in years and then they’re kissing. It’s not like any kiss they’ve shared before, which were all part of sex in some way, leading up or during or settling each other back down; this is just sweet and affirming, much-needed, Keith’s mouth soft against his and his tongue playful, and God, this doesn’t feel like just getting laid, never has.

There’s a noise outside, Pidge telling off one of her little AI follower-helpers, and Keith jumps back like he’s been burned. “Night,” he says and hurries out and Shiro licks his lips wistfully, tasting Keith and bourbon there.

***

He gets up early the next morning and heads to the gym for Ashkera. It’s an old Olkarion practice, not unlike Earth tai chi, part martial art and part dance; the Olkari had used it as part of their scientific techniques melding technology and vegetation and Pidge had introduced Shiro to it years ago, not long after the end of the war, when he’d gone through a phase of difficulty with the integration between his brain and the Altean arm. With no Allura to guide him he’d needed to find another way to fix the connection, shoring up his defences against the possibility of being used as a node again by someone without Earth’s interests at heart, and Ashkera helps him to ground back into his body.

He tries to go through some of the patterns most days just on his own but there’s a group on Atlas that meets informally a couple of times a week to practice together. Many are his Olkari crewmembers but there’s others as well, the closed community of the Atlas a perfect place for the habits and hobbies of different cultures to be shared. 

Today, there’s Keith. 

Kosmo is actually the first one Shiro notices, stretching his enormous body for all the world like he’s joining in, and then behind him Shiro spots Keith going through one of the basic floor exercises. He’s as incandescent to watch here as he is in hand-to-hand combat or swordplay, all long legs and perfect form. He’s wearing tight leggings and a baggy tanktop and Shiro watches it flop down as he bends over his front leg in nearly a full split, displaying one of the small tight nipples Shiro had licked and sucked on last night while Keith slowly fingerfucked him ready for his cock.

Elehir, one of the botanists, usually leads them and she claps her hands briskly to bring everyone together while Shiro is still peeling his tongue up off the floor. Shiro is at the back as usual, always conscious of his height and breadth for anyone trying to watch from behind him, so he doesn’t get a chance to say hello to Keith - but he is afforded an unfairly good view of Keith’s high, round ass and the slightest neat hint of his package as they warm up with waist bends, legs in an elegant vee, arms clasped behind and pushed up to the sky.

He’s wearing his own tight workout pants, and he’s going to embarrass himself in them if he isn’t careful. He closes his eyes and centres himself in the practice, enjoying the stretch as they move through the forms, finding that place inside himself where brain and body and arm are one.

He doesn’t think Keith can have seen him during the group practice, but when he looks up from the straight-backed cross-legged pose he likes to end on, his breaths still long and calm, Keith is sitting opposite him in an otherwise empty room. He’s hugging his legs to him, chin resting on his knees, smiling, Kosmo curled quietly around him. The posture reminds Shiro bittersweetly of their long history together; he’s known Keith a decade now, and Keith has grown into such an exceptional man.

“Good morning,” Shiro says. He goes first to his knees then stands up slowly, gratified by the way Keith’s gaze ends up shamelessly on his crotch. He offers Keith a hand, watching with no less attention the way Keith untangles himself before he lets Shiro pull him up. “I didn’t know you did Ashkera.”

Keith says, “Pidge introduced me to it. I was on Daizabaal a lot, thinking about my Galra and human sides. She thought it might help.” He presses in teasingly close, brushes his mouth over Shiro’s in a nonchalant way that makes Shiro tingle with attraction and happiness, as much at the personal disclosure as the simple, affectionate gesture. He adds, “I thought she’d be here, actually.”

“Almost never the morning practices,” Shiro says wryly: a good thing, because she’s so grumpy when she does come to morning class everyone usually ends up wishing she hadn’t. “We do fifth-day evenings, she’s usually at that one if she’s around.”

Unlike Pidge, early morning Keith is soft, still smiling at Shiro, looking rumpled and touchable. When Shiro takes his hand, daring, he slides their fingers together and squeezes and it feels even better now, both of them in sweaty workout clothes and peaceful from the morning exercise, than when Keith did the same thing while he was inside Shiro.

“Hunk said he’d make everyone breakfast when I got back,” Keith says. “Are you coming?”

***

There’s another alert later that day and the lions swing out again, with the same result. Shiro finds Pidge in the Atlas’ engineering lab afterwards, frowning in the centre of a spinning 3D map of the sector they’re in, projected constellations dancing white light over her cheeks and reflecting off her glasses. 

“We’re done here,” she says. “Damn it.”

“You always said the first -“

“Shut up,” she says and he smiles and comes to lean on the workstation next to her. A Rover comes to nibble at his fingers and he strokes it until it chirrups, recharged from the ambient electric field of his body, and wanders back off. 

“You did say though,” he says. 

“I know, but one in a million chances usually come off for us,” she says, slumping. 

He hasn’t touched Pidge outside a group embrace for years, maybe not since he was the only one who knew Katie Holt was the Green Paladin, but he’s seen how Sam and Matt comfort her through scientific disappointment. When he ruffles her hair and pulls her in, tentatively, she tips into his chest easily enough, and hugs him back. 

“We started on this quadrant because it’s the furthest out,” he says. He touches one of the galaxies in the slowly turning projection, spins it out and away, and another on the search matrix brightens into focus around them. This is one he knows; the Blade rebuilt rudimentary towns on an inhabited planet here three years ago and it’s been on the Coalition’s list for a visit ever since. “There’s so many other places to look. You’ve done a great job. We’re only just beginning.”

***

It’s been a long day, and he’s glad when Keith appears at his door a couple of hours after they’ve wormholed out to the next search area. 

He’s sleepy-eyed and quiet and he lets Shiro tug him down into bed to make out under the covers, slow and easy. Keith cups his face and kisses him like there’s nothing but this in the world, like he could do it forever, and in return Shiro does his best to block out everything outside and give everything he has to the moment, not circling around what this is and what it means and whether Keith will _stay_.

The sex up until now has been intense and amazing but somehow performative, as if Keith felt he had something to prove. Tonight he’s loose, lazy, and instead of working Shiro up and blowing his mind he lets Shiro wrap himself around him and just love on him, undressing him and exploring his body by mostly by touch, lit under the sheets only by the cool blue glow of his arm. He sucks Keith off slowly, luxuriously, and then Keith lets him cuddle into Keith’s chest, Keith’s fingers in his hair while he jerks Shiro off leisurely with his other hand. 

He pretends to be asleep so he doesn’t have to watch Keith leave.

***

Shiro spends most of the next day on his usual duties, slightly guiltily: the Atlas herself (now, again) always has part of his attention, but the daily life of the ship needs him too. He can’t allow himself to be too distracted by a love affair; not one with the paladins and their lions, not even one with Keith. 

He meets with his senior staff in the morning to review how things are going, and in the afternoon goes around several of the most active scientific and cultural projects. He spends nearly two hours with the engineering lab, who are overwhelmed first by Pidge having taken up residence for the foreseeable future (over the course of his visit he sees her drop in and solve three intractable problems in seven minutes, with the abstract air that means her mind is on other things) and second by the possibilities offered by Atlas’ rediscovered ability to transform. 

Her very first crew had been so ramshackle, and those he’d then taken out for the Coalition, the ones who’d experienced the merge with Voltron, had been a battle crew. It’s bittersweet to look around the scientists and engineers he has now and realise that over the last five years he’s lost almost all of those originals, even while it makes him proud to realise they’ve been replaced by innovators and explorers, to see their excitement at getting to know their ship in her truest form.

It’s a long day, and tiring. The Garrison had run endless classes in astronavigation, piloting, combat tactics, basic mechanical skills; there’d been very little on basic people management, but that’s what takes up most of Shiro’s day and energy. A bit of love and to projects going well, sympathy and support to those going badly, and mediation on tensions before they become conflicts is what keeps Atlas flying, in a very real sense even more than the Altean crystal embedded in the bridge.

He would usually take dinner alone in his quarters after a day like this. Curtis used to finish his shift at the same time as Shiro and then go to the gym, leave Shiro an hour alone to decompress.

Shiro pauses outside his door, and lets his feet carry him on to where they want to be, in the paladins’ quarters.

“Shiro!” Coran says brightly. “We’re playing Monsters and Mana. Want to join in?”

***

“I really think my character would have remembered to bring a cheese grater,” Shiro argues, then tries to hide behind Keith when Coran glowers at him, again. Keith’s ankle is crossed with his under the table, their calves pressed warmly together: it’s a simple schoolkid kind of pleasure, but a real one.

Pidge rolls her eyes at him from across the table. They’ve been playing for a couple of hours and Shiro is feeling nicely relaxed, his head clear, maybe a little blurred at the edges from the two beers he’s nursed. He’s definitely soft enough to be missing out on bits of the story in favour of detailed thoughts about Keith’s mouth and hands, how his cock feels pushing past Shiro’s lips, whether he’d squeeze his trimly muscled thighs together and let Shiro fuck in between them. It’s fine; Shiro just feels pretty strongly by now that a day he doesn’t get to touch Keith like he has a right to, like a lover, is a day that could’ve gone much better. 

He needs to talk to Keith about it, tell him that this isn’t about just getting laid for Shiro and never has been; that he’d never meant to ask Keith for that. He’s getting something from Keith that Keith doesn’t understand, he wants things from Keith that Keith isn’t aware of, and that’s not fair. Shiro knows he’s no prize, especially not with the baggage of a new divorce and captaincy of a ship he’s more tied to than ever. They have amazing chemistry, and he’d thought Keith wanted more from him, once; if it turns out that casual sex is all Keith wants to offer him now, Shiro hopes he can manage the courage to step away from it, back into the friendship without benefits he’s determined to rekindle. 

“Right,” Coran says. He licks his pencil thoughtfully and makes a small note in the Monsters and Mana book. “Meklavar, you come to a -”

The alert sounds. It’s the first time it’s gone off in this sector and Lance leaps up from the table, an instant transformation from the slump he’s been in for most of the game, Coran taking pity on him with low-key storylines for his cleric. He’s the first one to dive for his room, to get armoured up and drop down the passage into his lion’s hangar; Pidge and Hunk at least remember a hasty, “Thanks, Coran!” on their way, although Coran is once again almost vibrating with hope and happy to see them off. Keith squeezes Shiro’s knee briefly, and then he’s off too.

Shiro realises he’s smiling when he notices Coran looking at him piercingly. “What?” he says.

“Oh, nothing,” Coran says, and twirls his moustache into anxious perfection. “Shall we go up and keep an eye on them from the bridge?”

***

“How’s it looking, paladins?” he prompts, concerned, after most of a varga has passed. The black lion is looping wide elegant ellipses around from the front to the side of the Atlas, her sensors following the lion with a bright interest Shiro can feel, but the search pattern the others were flying has degraded into fitful drifting.

“There’s nothing out here,” Lance says, sounding dispirited. Shiro glances at Coran, who slumps back into his chair and rubs his eyes. He’s never seemed old to Shiro, even though he undoubtedly is in both Altean lifespan and the thousands of years in cryosleep, but today he seems every one of his years, weary with it.

“I’m still getting readings,” Pidge says, a clear ring of frustration in her voice. “Let’s stay out.”

Shiro frowns. “Do you need Blue?” he says slowly. “We can open her hangar…”

“We don’t need Blue yet,” Keith says. “There’s _something_ , Pidge is right. Can’t you guys feel it? Listen to your lions!” 

He sounds hotly authoritative, like he used to during battle, and it gives Shiro a shiver of remembrance. He’d always admired that version of Keith, how fucking _good_ he is when he trusts his instincts.

“He’s right!” Hunk yells, cut into by Pidge calling, “Another quintessence surge! Everyone form up -”

“Shiro -” Coran is saying, peering over him, worried, and Shiro is on the floor -

“I can feel it,” he says faintly and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t pass out this time. He feels it, every glorious moment of Atlas’ transformation, the rolling smooth click click slide of everything turning itself upside down and inside out as she stretches out into her true self like Shiro popping out his back in his warm comfortable bed in the morning. It’s amazing, it feels _right_ , closer to her than he’s ever been before powered by the unique quintessence surge, and he’s distantly aware he’s making vaguely pornographic noises, bites down on his tongue. It’s a good thing this isn’t his usual response to her transformation, the bridge usually full of his crew: he hopes Coran is paying more attention to the lions than to Shiro’s sprawl on the floor and in particular his jacket having ridden up to show the badly-timed bulge of Shiro’s erection. 

She’s alive and perfect and she wants something to _do_. “Oh, baby,” he murmurs. “The fighting’s over. You don’t have to do that any more.”

Well, that’s fine, he gets back. She doesn’t mind that. She doesn’t have to fight. But she’s made for something, not just flying around all day.

He’s in her body, somehow, while utterly conscious of his own still on the floor of the bridge. She puts out one hand, graceful as a ballet dancer, weightless in the depths of space, and he laughs, startled and pleased, as the black lion lands on her fingers like a butterfly in a human palm on a sunny summer’s day. Atlas’ comms are still wired through to the black lion: he hears Keith’s gasp as clearly as if they were in bed together. 

And then as suddenly as it came, it’s gone. “Fuck,” he says under his breath. He feels as limp as after a really hard, really good workout. Atlas is still transformed, still happy about it, kicking one of her massive legs like a child; he can hear her, but he’s no longer a part of her.

He gets himself up in stages, rolling onto his stomach, then getting up on his knees, then hauling himself up with the help of Coran’s arm and the back of Coran’s chair.

“Everyone okay?” he says. His vision swims, colours too bright, and he squeezes his eyes shut and scrunches his human fingers against the cool leather of the navigator’s chair. He’s Takashi Shirogane, and he is a normal human being, six feet two inches tall and two hundred pounds, prosthetic notwithstanding. He is not a fibresteel and hydro-graphene battleclass robot-ship the height of the Tokyo Tower with a punch that can drive through mountains. He breathes in, holds it, breathes out.

“Everyone’s fine!” Keith shouts. He’s laughing, exultant. “Holy _shit_. Pidge! What happened?”

“Is she here?” Lance demands, and Coran grabs Shiro’s arm hard. It hurts, but he welcomes that; it helps him drop back into his body, shaking, feeling _everything_. He’s still hard, greedy, energy bubbling through him; he wants his hands on Keith, the silk feel of his skin against Shiro’s, the warm thrust of his tongue in Shiro’s mouth.

“I think we were close!” Pidge screams.

“Hey! It’s okay. Everyone back onto Atlas,” Hunk calls, sounding the most together of everyone. “Pidge, it’s okay! Lance, she’s not here, but we can use this data, improve the search! She’s close. We’re gonna find her.”

***

He greets the paladins somehow: exchanges words with them, soothes Pidge from her frenzy of discovery, comforts Lance from his mix of despondency at another failure and the bewildered hope at Pidge’s exhilaration, puts them both in Hunk’s capable hands and sends them off to their quarters. Half of his attention is on Atlas, almost humming in his mind as she cycles crystal magic through her new networks and synapses, playing quietly with her mecha form. 

The other half of his attention, all of his real-world attention, is all the way on Keith.

“Come on,” Keith says, tightly, but Shiro can recognise lust on him by now and he’s dripping with it, his eyes wide and the pupils narrowing to slits, his head high and cheeks flushed purplish-red, his stride hurried with muscular tension as he turns and leads Shiro away from the hangar, towards the residential wings. Shiro doesn’t know how he isn’t already touching Keith, can’t stand waiting, but the fire in him isn’t going to let him stop when he starts and he’s not desperate enough to move on Keith in the corridors. Not yet.

He is desperate enough to whine, the noise thankfully swallowed up by Keith’s mouth, when Keith all but throws himself at him as soon as the door of Shiro’s quarters slide closed behind them. Their kisses are little more than crashing together, passion like a living thing between them, born of them both. Keith’s hands are all over Shiro, in his hair and over his shoulders and around his waist, on his ass and between his legs, where Shiro’s so hard. He can’t feel Keith under the hard shell of the paladin armour but his head tips back and he gasps when Shiro slides a thigh against him like the pressure there is utterly necessary.

Shiro still feels bright with quintessence, like if he cut himself now his veins would bleed light. He feels connected, to everything, Atlas and Black and the paladins, and over it all Keith, always Keith, more responsive than ever under his hands. He seems to shimmer everywhere Shiro touches him, and Shiro needs them to be closer.

He’d be naked quicker if he just did it, but he can’t stand not to be kissing and it seems Keith feels the same. Their hands tangle as they try to undress themselves and each other, laughing into each other’s mouths, breathless and a little wild; they keep overbalancing, reeling around the room, and Shiro is going to regret a broken furnishing or two or three in the morning, but right now nothing can be wrong. He feels like he should be on some old-fashioned pulpit somewhere, screaming about the interconnectedness of all things, that’s how big this feels; like the first time he’d piloted a ship around back towards Earth and seen the blue-green jewel of their planet hanging in space, like a glimpse into the beyond he’ll have forgotten by tomorrow the way the veil had drawn back over him when he returned to a mortal body: and yet at the same time as he feels beatific love for all things his focus is tightening irresistibly down to one, to sensational reality, the man in his arms.

He’s down to just his socks and Keith, somehow, bare of everything including his undersuit but except the left gauntlet, when Keith bites down on Shiro’s lower lip - hard enough to get his attention, not hard enough for the hurt not to be instantly soothed by the slow swipe of Keith’s tongue - and murmurs, “Do you fuck?”

Time slows down like the universe has pressed pause. “What?” Shiro says, witlessly, but his cock squashed between them is jerking against Keith’s toned stomach.

“I want you inside me,” Keith says, and the plainness of it, the lack of seduction, is hotter than anything else could have been. He leans back on the desk he’s been perched on, slides the long, long legs he’s had wrapped around Shiro’s thighs up to waist, his stomach muscles contracting in a way that calls urgently for Shiro’s hand. He strokes Keith there, feeling the heat at the core of him, takes Keith’s cock in his fist, as skilled at this now with his left hand as he ever was with his right. Keith moans, his body rippling gorgeously from hips to shoulders, his head tipping back and dark hair falling away from the perfect curve of his collarbones, displaying himself shamelessly, and Shiro can’t refuse him anything. 

“I can do that,” he whispers, and this is too far from Keith already. He bends over him, presses Keith back against the desk, sliding his prosthetic hand under the small of Keith’s back to support him there as he arches instinctively up against Shiro. They kiss again deep and messy. “I didn’t realise this was something you wanted,” he ventures, massages one of Keith’s round ass cheeks and Keith gives a soft laugh without opening his eyes.

“Maybe it’s something I’ve been waiting for,” he says and pulls Shiro into another transcendent kiss, all the world falling away around them, breaking atmosphere and still climbing. 

After the first time Keith had come to him in his rooms Shiro had stashed lube in a few different places around. He’d been sheepish about it at the time, but now he thanks God for his past self’s perfectly-placed optimism. He pulls the tube out of his desk drawer and ticks the temperature of his Altean hand up a little to warm it. He wants Keith to be comfortable; he wants this to be good for him. If he’s honest with himself he wants even more, for this to be great for Keith, amazing, the best he’s ever had. He wants to take care of Keith the way Keith’s taken care of him.

Keith sighs when Shiro rubs gently at his rim. It gives a little around his fingertip, like his body is used to this even for the thickness of Shiro’s prosthetic hand, but Shiro doesn’t see anything wrong with helping out some: he gives Keith another quick, dirty kiss and slides down him, kneeling in front of the desk and taking Keith in his mouth without ceremony. Keith yells, louder than he’s ever got for Shiro before, his heel slamming into Shiro’s back hard enough to hurt, and Shiro closes his eyes and grins around his mouthful of cock, sucking blissfully as he presses his finger all the way in. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever function again at this desk for its intended purpose with this his overwhelming memory of it, but that’s okay: maybe he’ll get it bronzed and bring in another one for work.

He works Keith slowly. The urgency of before is still thrumming in him, quintessence shimmering purple-white everywhere he and Keith are touching when he opens his eyes a little and looks through his eyelashes. It wants him to connect and fuck and live, but it’s happy to be channeled into this: he knows Keith’s body well enough now to bring him to the edge and ride him there, moaning and pulling Shiro’s hair, demanding, while he fingers Keith more for the joy of it than Keith needing it. 

He doesn’t use three fingers for long; the fingers on his prosthetic hand are thick, three a lot to take, but he flails around, finds Keith’s hand and brings it to his spit-slick cock so Shiro can move lower, add his mouth to the stretch of Keith’s hole. Keith makes a shocked noise when Shiro licks and kisses at his rim, hungry for the earthiness of Keith there, another even more shocked when Shiro pulls his fingers out and presses his tongue fully to him, wriggling it a little way inside. He can feel Keith’s toes curling where his feet are pressed against Shiro’s back.

By the time he stands back up and pulls Keith’s hips snugly against his Keith is completely debauched on the desk, pink-faced and glaring, flushed as red down his chest as his old jacket, and he bites at Shiro’s thumb petulantly when Shiro rubs the swell of his lower lip and tests the sudden sharpness of his teeth. He doesn’t bite when Shiro leans down to replace his thumb with his tongue, arches up into Shiro instead with a low cry, and he’s the one to throw his legs over Shiro’s shoulders.

“Oh my God, Keith, you’re so -” Shiro mutters, impressed and almost unbearably turned on by the long, flexible stretch of his body. His cock throbs with thinking about how deep he’ll be able to get with Keith bent double like this. He licks at Keith’s mouth, too messy and uncoordinated to make it a real kiss, and takes his cock in his fist to guide it inside.

Keith goes silent when Shiro enters him, his mouth wide, tense with not even breathing, as if it’s too much. Shiro hesitates with only the head in, Keith flared open around it, grits his teeth against the strident pressure in his spine to drive forward, take the hole offered up to him so obscenely and wonderfully, see if he can’t turn the silence into a scream of ecstasy.

“Go,” Keith chokes out, panting again. “ _Move_ , fuck, I’m already, give it to me -” and Shiro groans at the feeling of Keith’s hands on his ass, nails digging in, the hint of pain a sweet counterpoint to the deep hard glide of his cock all the way inside. Keith does come as soon as he’s fully inside, primed and ready from Shiro’s mouth, cock rubbing between their stomachs, his channel rippling and clinging to Shiro’s cock; he does yell with it, noisy enough Shiro thinks it might ring in his ears forever and he hopes it does. Keith’s beautiful, his head tipped back on Shiro’s desk, loose hair piled in a dark halo around him, the long line of his neck and the fine point of his chin poised on the precipice where classical sculpture turns into pornography.

Shiro can’t resist it. He bites Keith there, sucks a light bruise over his hammering pulse point. Then he straightens, legs Keith’s legs slip bonelessly from his shoulders to wrap long and lazy around his waist as he flexes his hips and starts to draw out, mindful of Keith’s sensitivity after orgasm: finishing himself off on Keith’s stomach, gazing enchanted at the wreck of him after coming so easily on Shiro’s cock, is more than enough. 

“Keep going,” Keith says, his voice gravelly and breathless.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Shiro says, but his hips have already thrust him all the way back in, gently, like his body is so attuned to Keith it’ll take his orders without them passing anywhere near Shiro’s brain. He shudders when he’s fully seated again, Keith’s hole clutching at him, tight and wet and perfect.

“Still feels good,” Keith says, gives Shiro a sharp slap on the flank like a jockey on a recalcitrant horse and then stretches his arms over his head, shaking out his whole body and rolling his hips against Shiro, knowing and needy.

Shiro shakes his head, but it’s more in wonder than dissent; he already knows he’s going to give Keith exactly what he’s asked for. “God, Keith,” he says again. Keith’s not getting all his own way, though. Shiro slides out and adds more lube to his cock with a shaking hand and as he presses back in slow and slick, he hitches Keith’s legs up, holding them together braced against Shiro’s chest and left shoulder, runs the big warm fingers of his Altean hand up Keith’s sticky softening cock.

He can still get deep like this and Keith is tighter than ever around Shiro’s cock. Shiro plants his feet and fucks him methodically, memorising every expression that crosses Keith’s face as he stares up at Shiro, heavy-lidded but barely even blinking, like he doesn’t want to miss a moment. Shiro savours each sensation as he tests Keith to exhaustion, wanting it all: the way Keith squeezes down on him, clinging, when Shiro turns his face and kisses Keith’s calf; how he tries to fuck himself back on Shiro’s cock when Shiro murmurs how good he feels; Keith’s hands in his own hair and his teeth in his own lip when Shiro massages his cock and feels it harden again under his touch.

Orgasm creeps up on him, pleasure rolling up and down his body in waves; when he comes it’s a tidal wave, crashing into him and leaving him unsteady, undone. He falls down into Keith’s waiting arms, squashing him back into the desk and kissing him weakly, and he feels wiped clean, seen. Maybe even loved; still.

Keith is hard again between them and Shiro runs his finger around the head meaningfully as he stands back up on wobbly legs, his dick feeling cold between his legs outside the welcoming heat of Keith’s body. 

“Come to bed?” he says.

He doesn’t know whether Keith is feeling this between them too or whether he just wants the implicit promise of another orgasm, but they help each other through to the bedroom, neither quite sure who’s leaning on whom, and Keith is the one to pull Shiro’s mouth to his as soon as they curl up together under the sheets. Shiro’s fighting tiredness, his body wanting to relax into the languor of a magnificent orgasm, his connection to Atlas back online and bleeding the ship’s torpor into him. But he can still manage a handjob, and he enjoys Keith’s face up close this time as Shiro brings him pleasure, swallows Keith’s soft sounds, kisses him through a second trembling climax.

He’s braced for Keith to get up, leave as usual, but Keith sighs after he comes, his eyelids fluttering, and when Shiro takes him into his arms, bold, settles Keith on his chest with his arm wrapped around Keith’s shoulders, he seems to rest.

“Hey,” he says, a minute or two later, and Shiro fights off sleep to make an acknowledging noise. His voice is an ombre of sleepiness, trailing off as he says, “Remember when we were in Black? You put your hand on my shoulder and we flew her together…”

There’d been many times like that: but only one where Keith had been aware of it. The quintessence had surged then, too, both of them working in perfect unity to connect to the black lion and unlock her teleportation, get back to their friends and save the universe again.

“I remember,” he says. Keith is quiet where he’s resting on Shiro’s chest, his breaths regular, and Shiro hopes so deeply, wants this moment so much -

Keith gets up to leave, and Shiro lets him go.

***

Shiro rides down to Mahani’s surface in Black, which seems to have become his usual assignment with nobody commenting either way; even Atlas seems approving in his mind, although she’s possessive of his presence on other ships and there’s a small transport heading down with them carrying medical, scientific and cultural senior officers to greet the Mahanians, learn from them, and see if there’s any areas where Coalition knowledge can be of use to them. Keith is back in his Blades uniform and that feels odd and new too, even though Shiro’s been seeing him in that for years longer than he did the paladin armour.

The expansive camps the people here set up each season are built in wide spirals ( _mathematically perfect_ , Pidge had said, stars in her eyes) and the lions land carefully away from any of the long, low structures. Only three people come out to meet them, two obvious bodyguards flanking their chief.

It barely comes to Keith’s shoulders but when it recognises Keith it throws its arms around him with a boisterous glad cry, and the rest of the village starts to trickle out to meet them, curious and welcoming.

“Keith!” it exclaims, delighted, and Shiro hides a smile as it pinches Keith’s cheeks with all four of its hands. “And this must be the lion-ship you talked about. It’s returned to you, how wonderful! Come to the fire, dear, and your friends, come along, come.”

***

Shiro’s familiar with Lance’s tale of Allura, but when he sees Lance standing and talking and gesturing in front of a group of small Mahanians running their vivid spectrum from yellow to orange to red he sits down at the back to listen. One of the children glances at him and then, possibly recognising him from talking to its chief earlier, climbs into his lap and leans back contentedly against his chest to listen to the story, sucking two of its thumbs and clutching a ragged but recognisable Voltron dolly.

Lance sounds more intense than usual, speaking of Allura with the same passion Shiro remembers from when she was newly lost to them. Seeing Shiro in his audience seems to help calm him and he flashes Shiro a grateful smile before he finishes up with his usual lesson about Allura saving everything and everyone by recognising that even Honerva had good in her.

He takes a few questions, and then the teacher thanks him and claps to the children. The kid in Shiro’s lap scrambles up, and with a bright smile back at Shiro and an enthusiastic four-handed wave races off with the rest of the class.

“Hi,” Lance says, coming over to sit next to him. The cheerful, calm image he was projecting during his lesson has given way to a more downhearted Lance and Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes him a little, rough comfort.

“That was good,” he says. “Must be weird talking about losing her when we’re looking to bring her back.”

Lance rubs his hands over his face and Shiro’s eyes are drawn to the Altean marks on his face. As far as he knows they’re cosmetic, but he’s never really understood what they are and how they came to be. He knows Keith had watched Lance covertly for any signs of Altean-level strength in the days after Allura’s loss and doesn’t think it made that kind of change to Lance’s body. None of them have ever liked to ask Lance about it. If he has superpowers he’s been keeping them to himself, living his peaceful life with his family; until Red came back, and other than their yearly trips to New Altea, Shiro isn’t sure Lance has got onto an airplane, never mind a spacecraft.

“I can’t let myself think about it too much,” Lance admits. “So much could happen. What if she’s out there but we never get to her? What if she lives and dies and I never see her again? Space is _big_ , Shiro.”

Shiro shakes his head. “She’s trying to help us find her,” he says encouragingly. Despite Lance’s glum words, there’s a quiet resolve to him that’s poignant. Shiro’s had his share of trying to keep himself going when everything before him seemed uncertain, and it must be hard for Lance to be facing the possible length of their search and not knowing exactly what’s at the end of it; whether he can pick back up the dreams he’s sure Lance once had of settling down with Allura, a life together, maybe a family as close and happy as the one he grew up in. “That quintessence surge yesterday… Pidge is using the data to refine her device right now.”

“I know you’re right,” Lance says. He takes a deep breath and Shiro can almost see him bouncing back, deciding to look on the bright side: his resilience was always one of the things Shiro appreciated most about him. “One day at a time, right?”

“Right,” Shiro says. He’d like nothing more than to sit in the warm golden light of this planet and just breathe for a while, but he’s due to meet the village chief and give the Coalition marketing talk shortly. He can deliver it in his sleep, at least, literally; he’s had more than one dream about giving it, to aliens his imagination comes up with which aren’t half as fantastical as some he’s actually met. He usually wakes up from those dreams wondering when first contact became rote enough for dreaming about it to feel boring.

The Voltron doll is still in his lap where the kid forgot it in its excitement. He hands it to Lance, who smiles and strokes over it with obvious affection, pulling gently at the blue leg. “Why don’t you take this over to the schoolroom, spend some time playing with the kids? They’re pretty cute.”

“Sure,” Lance says. “Thanks, Shiro. See you later.”

He wanders off and Shiro smiles to himself as he hears excited shouts come from the hut the children had disappeared into moments later. Then he shakes himself out and puts on his most professional and charming smile: the chief’s guards are outside its door and they gesture Shiro in.

***

“How did it go with Ratay?” Keith says, dropping down by the fire, and Shiro stops watching a group of the teenaged Mahanians try to teach Veronica, Lance and some of the landing officers their very fast folkdance, Hunk behind them laughing over an impromptu cookout station with some of the adults, and turns to smile at him. Kosmo has curled up behind Keith, Keith reclining on him unselfconsciously; Shiro wonders whether he could get away with the same, using the wolf’s thick, soft fur against the slight bite coming into the air, and then Kosmo’s tail thwaps against him, lingering on his chest with a little push, and he leans back into Kosmo’s comforting bulk.

“Fine, I think,” he says. Keith hands him a cup of the local moonshine and Shiro nods over it to Ratay, presiding benevolently over the celebration of strangers coming from a contraption made of elaborately woven wood, of a colour Shiro’s eyes sometimes tell him is purple and sometimes orange. “The day job is just generating goodwill, mostly. I think the Coalition could do a lot for them.”

“They could do a lot for the Coalition, one day,” Keith says. He winces as he sips at his very strong and very sour drink and Shiro claps him on the back, high, letting his hand linger. There’s something sexy about seeing Keith as primly covered up as the senior Blades uniform leaves him, after nights of free access to his nakedness; it makes Shiro want to strip him down slowly, lavishing care on each bit of skin revealed. Keith doesn’t outwardly react, but he leans into Shiro, just perceptibly enough that Shiro and his rapt attentiveness catches the motion. It gives Shiro enough confidence to start to plan to make his ideas a reality; he almost wants to suggest they slip off for a quickie, but what he has in mind will take a while and drawing it out, turning both of them on over the course of the evening celebration and unleashing all that pent-up desire on one another later, has its own appeal.

Keith is going on and Shiro tries to listen carefully, although Keith’s sly smile and come-hither sideways glance tells him Keith knows exactly the kind of thing that’s going through Shiro’s mind, just from a simple touch. “Ratay showed me records from before the Galra came. They had some amazing development, they were space-faring… the Empire stripped their planet of almost all its natural resources, came back and took their strongest leaders and scientists, over and over again.”

Shiro looks around. The settlement is nice, well-ordered and clearly full of a happy community with close bonds: but they’re scrounging out life on a planet that had looked like a half-dead ruin from orbit, and he remembers what Pidge had said about the natural math skill evident in the way they put together their villages. 

“The Blades helped them to survive,” he points out. “The Coalition can help them to rebuild.” If the Coalition can help get them back on a footing where they can decide for themselves what level of technological advancement they want and what kind of role to play in the wider community of the universe, that’s worthwhile work.

“Yeah,” Keith says and the wistful note in his tone makes Shiro want to touch him again, so he does, slipping a hand between Keith and Kosmo to rub a comforting circle on his lower back. “I sometimes think it’d be nice to see that part. We come, we go, you know? I never see anyone thriving unless I can make a field trip when we’re back in the area.”

“Glad we could get you back, then,” Shiro murmurs. Keith smiles at him, sweet this time, and it feels like the perfect moment for a kiss; Shiro wants badly to lean into him for a moment of intimacy, and at this point he’s even pretty sure Keith would accept it from him: but they’re in uniform. He shifts a little closer instead, at just the right distance for plausible deniability, and the wolf’s thick fur gives him enough cover to slip his arm around Keith’s waist and caress his hip. Keith doesn’t react for a moment and then he covers Shiro’s hand with his, tangling their fingers before letting go, and Shiro relaxes into the welcome.

“We’re the same, I guess,” he adds. “Atlas does the meet and greet, then we move on. I see the representatives sometimes if they send them to council and they’re usually happy to tell me how it’s going, but that’s about it.”

It’s not exactly what Shiro had trained for. He’d never been the kind of pilot who showed up just in time for takeoff and figured everything but the control pad would look after itself. It’s part of how he’d built his reputation with Sam; he’d been in every room pertaining to his missions that he could talk his way into from the moment he decided he wanted the assignment until the publication of the final research reports. 

He’d enjoyed that, being involved in everything, knowing his mission inside-out. It’s why they’d sent him out recruiting, trusted him with the greenest cadet classes; he’d been passionate about the Garrison then, about astroexploration, not dutiful. He hasn’t thought about that for years.

Keith says, “Saving the universe one day at a time -”

“- But never getting to enjoy it?” Shiro says. Keith looks at him and for a moment they’re as much in harmony as in any of the sex they’ve had together. 

Connecting with Keith used to always be this easy. Until the lions came back Shiro hadn’t thought about that for a long time, either.

“Hey hey,” Hunk says, coming up to them with Pidge and Lance trailing behind him. “Dinner coming through. Try the veal, it’s not veal but it’s similar, served in a brioche bun with premeap sauce, I’m proud of it, you can thank me later.”

Shiro tries to figure out how to accept the food without either looking weird for doing it one-handed or making it incredibly obvious that he’s having to reluctantly detach himself from Keith to do so. The steady way Hunk is looking at him is saying _don’t fuck with me, and really don’t fuck with my food_ , though, so he sighs and tries to reclaim his hand as discreetly as possible, brushing a couple of wolf hairs off before he reaches up for his napkin.

“Amazing, Hunk, thank you,” he says after his first bite, and as ever he can be wholly sincere about it: it always impresses him how Hunk’s skills go from overseeing a nine-course formal banquet with every single plate served simultaneously and perfectly, to the innovative dishes using ingredients from around the universe he creates in his restaurants, to street food whipped up like magic using whatever he finds to hand wherever he finds his hands.

Kosmo pokes his head up from where he’s been lying quietly on Keith’s other side. Shiro cups his Altean hand possessively around his burger, but Hunk has a meal for Kosmo too, and Keith lays it in front of him as the paladins arrange themselves around Shiro, Keith and Kosmo’s effective windbreak on an incongruously gingham picnic blanket also produced as if from nowhere by Hunk. 

The fire is crackling, there’s a rich warmth spreading throughout Shiro from the moonshine, the happy noises of the Mahanians are interspersed with the laughter of members of his living ship’s crew, his friends are near him and Keith is next to him: he feels good.

The drift into lazy, easy conversation, and if Shiro ignores the twinge in his lower back he gets now from sitting on the ground it could be six years ago, the five of them killing endless hours on the Castle, the three younger ones carrying the bulk of the conversation while Shiro and Keith sit back and traded amused commentary with only their eyes. From Hunk they hear enough about the origins of the dinner they’ve just eaten for Shiro to be grateful he’s finished already, and Lance had somehow managed to get adorable life stories out of almost all the kids he’d given his talk to and has them all smiling with recounting them.

“How’s your tracking device?” Shiro asks Pidge when Lance winds down to a close. Hunk has a jug of the local drink and he fills them all up: this batch is just as strong as before and Shiro shakes his head a little as the alcohol burns down his throat, leaving a faint nail polish-remover coldness on his tongue.

“It’s great!” she says, perking up, and it really must have gone well because she immediately launches into the enthused technobabble she usually shares with her family and spares her friends. Shiro smiles and nods supportively whenever she pauses for breath (which is not often) and thinks embarrassing, dreamy thoughts about the way Keith had let Shiro put his arm around him, as innocent as kids on a first date but promising of so much more.

“Huh,” Hunk says, the only one of them who’s capable of even half-following her. Shiro knows that his technological expertise finds its outlet these days mostly in ever-more outrageous gadgets for his restaurants, but he keeps his hand in enough that the Atlas’ engineers are always plotting how they can lure him down to their workrooms to ply him with questions and ask for help. “So if you -” and the next bit is even more incomprehensible, but unlike Pidge Hunk does pay attention to his audience so Shiro tries hard to look like he’s listening, and actually does when Hunk concludes with, “- you could track _between_ realities. That’s amazing, Pidge.”

“That is the logical next step,” Pidge says matter-of-factly.

“You think that’s where she is?” Lance says uncertainly. He reaches for Hunk’s jug and pours himself another drink, emptying it. “When she remade the other realities, you think she’s still there? In one of them?”

“I don’t think so,” Pidge says, irritated; she hates presenting a cool new thing and then being asked the one question about it she can’t yet answer. “I think she’s here. The quintessence surges are happening _here_. They could be marking moving between realities though.”

“Another rift?” Shiro says, suddenly alert.

Pidge shakes her head. “They’ve been in different places. The rift was stationary in space, more or less. The quintessence is more deliberate. It’s leading us somewhere.”

“To Allura,” Lance says peacefully, the concerned wrinkles in his forehead smoothing out.

“She sacrificed herself for those realities,” Keith says quietly. “It’s good she’ll get to see what she did. Here, but maybe others too.” Kosmo sighs behind them, massive sides heaving and Shiro instinctively puts a hand on his flank to calm him; on Keith’s other side Kosmo curls his head a little closer to Keith. Shiro’s always been uncertain exactly how much human speech he understands, but right now he could believe Kosmo is following the conversation word for word.

“We’d still be a long way from being able to visit them,” Pidge says, although the unholy gleam of discovery is in her eyes, the campfire’s emerald flames sparking off of them.

“Oh no,” Lance says warningly, recognising it just as well as Shiro. “Allura is not gonna spend her time trying to hop between the multiverse for your benefit, Pidge. She’s gonna…” he trails off, looking briefly lost again, and Hunk rests a hand on his arm and a gimlet eye on the tankard Lance is clutching. “I want her home with me,” he says, subdued, and Shiro doesn’t dare look at Keith, afraid not only that he’ll give too much away of himself and the things he’s been starting to dream about, but that they’ll let slip the worries they’ve discussed. They don’t know what they’ll find; even if it is Allura, even if there’s no monsters or entities, god knows how much time has passed for her, if it has at all: whether she’ll be the same as when she stepped away with Honerva. Whether she’ll still love Lance, and still want to be with him.

Lance drains his drink and a worryingly over-helpful Mahanian bounds over to replenish it, beaming, despite Hunk’s efforts at discreet headshaking. Maybe they don’t understand the gesture; Shiro goes for direct action and manages to cover his tankard over in time to get just a couple of drops on his fingers, which he doesn’t mind licking off, conscious of Keith not looking at him so carefully a brazen stare would’ve felt more obvious.

Thus fortified, Lance says with a brightness that wavers and makes Shiro’s heart squeeze for him, “Hey, Pidge, you think all the Lances in all these realities are going to get all their Alluras back?”

“Well -” Pidge says.

“It’d be nice to think so, right? I hope so,” Hunk cuts in, putting a gentle hand on Pidge’s arm before she can start in on the systematic destruction of Lance’s dreams.

“If she’s been between realities, I’m sure she can return in all of them,” Shiro puts in, trying to be tactful.

Pidge gives him a flat it-doesn’t-work-like-that stare and he makes beseeching eyebrows at her in return, inclining his head subtly towards Lance, now peering muzzily down into his cup with a downward tilt to his mouth. She sighs and says grudgingly, “Theoretically in a multiverse anything that can happen does happen, with every choice branching off a brand new reality, so yes, Allura coming back would occur in many of them.” It’s not quite what Shiro had been going for, but he’ll take it: Lance looks up again, anyway, seeming to be back with them from whatever brooding place he’d gone to in his head.

“Every choice?” Keith says doubtfully. “Every single choice for every person in the universe? That would mean -”

“A number of realities so big humanity doesn’t have a translation for it yet?” she says calmly. “Yeah.”

“She’s had a lot of work to do, then,” Lance says. He tries to drink the rest of his drink, realises its empty, and grabs for Hunk’s. Shiro’s gaze meets Hunk’s concerned one: God knows Shiro’s found an evening’s refuge in the bottom of a bottle occasionally, but he doesn’t like to see Lance drunk and unhappy. “That’s - that’s probably why it’s taken her this long.”

Pidge casts her eyes to the heavens, but says, “Sure.”

“So all of our choices happened somewhere,” Keith says. “There’s realities with a version of us for everything. Honerva winning, or Zarkon winning, or us never finding the blue lion at all -”

“- Or where you put on red socks this morning instead of black,” Hunk says. “Yup. That’s the theory.”

“I think about that a lot,” Shiro says softly. “We had so many big choices during the war. So many things that turned out okay only because of luck.” He’s prevaricating; his choices in war were what they were, and he doesn’t think about them. It’s the others he thinks about, the personal choices, small in the scheme of things, that never would have changed any world but his. Never taking the chance of leaning into Adam’s study carrel for a clumsy, surprised, sweet kiss; saying no to Kerberos; saying yes to Keith.

He leans in closer to Keith now, not meaning anything by it, just wanting to be near him. Keith turns away from him: to handfeed Kosmo the rest of his burger, yes, but pointedly. Shiro can’t help feeling it as a cold-water rejection, and it makes him shrink back to his place, brought low.

Pidge shrugs. “As my dad probably would’ve said if we’d known about all this when he started making up his sayings, if you worry too much about what alternate realities you could be creating every moment of your life, you might miss something great.”

“I think every Hunk out there is just taking the chance he’s in the best possible reality,” Hunk says firmly. “That’s the only way to make it. We’ll never know.”

“I agree,” Keith says, but there’s something remote in the way he says it: he’s still sitting with them, but the camaraderie, the warm feeling Shiro had had of home, his team back together, has vanished. Shiro wants to reach for him, hold him again, and damn the paladins or his crew seeing, but the still-vivid sense memory of Keith turning away from him just before stops him. “You have to keep moving forward. Wondering _what if_ doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Lance says. He’s slurring a little, his comfortable seat on the ground having turned more into an ungainly slump, limbs every which way. Shiro looks at Hunk again and this time Hunk gives him a quick nod.

“Hey, man -” he says, reaching for Lance, but Lance shakes him off.

He says, “You guys have no idea how much time I spent, just wishing I’d, I’d done _something_. Stopped her or gone with her -” He’s getting loud, and out of the corner of his eye Shiro sees Veronica break off the cheerful conversation she’s having with a couple of the Mahanians and several of the crew, and stand up. 

Lance leans over and grabs Keith and Keith pushes him off, not meanly but with less gentleness than Shiro’s seen him display towards Lance since they came back together on the Atlas. Lance doesn’t seem to notice, just bounces off and reels into Shiro, grabbing his jacket. 

“I’m getting a second chance,” he says, wonderingly, tearfully, staring into Shiro’s eyes, and Shiro pauses in wrapping his fingers around Lance’s to try to pry him off and just holds his hands instead, transfixed on Lance’s hope.

“Lance?” Veronica says, dropping down to kneel beside them. She gives Shiro a quick, understanding grimace and then her attention is fully on her brother as he turns into her embrace, which is compassionate despite her next, teasing words: “Wow, you’re drunk. I‘m telling Mom.”

“Don’t tell Mom! I’m not _drunk_ ,” Lance protests, drunkenly. He peers around her, and he’s looking at Keith and Shiro again, his eyes suddenly piercing and clear. “I’m just saying, you have to go for things, you have to go after the people you love, because you don’t get another chance! If you get another chance -”

He crumples into Veronica and Shiro clasps his hands, squeezes them together hard, as he watches Lance bury his face in her shoulder. She’s in full big-sister mode now, stroking his hair, her eyes wide and sympathetic. 

Hunk goes to them, gets Lance up and takes his weight against his side easily, Lance’s arm around his shoulders, Veronica keeping tight hold of his other hand. “Getting a second chance is lucky,” Lance says earnestly to him. “I can’t believe I’m getting so lucky. Not ‘til I see her again.”

“We get you,” Hunk says softly. “I think it’s bedtime for you, buddy. Come on.” He whispers something to him that makes Lance’s wobbling lip curve and smile again, and they start to make a slow way out from the campfire, back to the lions. Shiro tries to smile up at him as they pass and Hunk puts his other hand on Shiro’s shoulder, briefly and warmly.

Shiro can feel a gaze boring into him like fire; when he glances round Pidge is glinting at him through her glasses, her stare flat and unimpressed. He doesn’t dare look at Keith.

“Well,” she says. “He’s gonna be feeling _that_ in the morning.”

Keith gives a shrug so heavy Shiro feels it through the wolf. He chances a look and Keith is rubbing at his face, his fingers lingering over the scar Shiro put there as if it aches.

“He’s got a lot to deal with,” Shiro says clumsily. “It’s good for him to let some of it out.” Any skill he’s ever had at diplomacy, at knowing what to say, seems to have deserted him; he hadn’t felt anywhere near drunk, but his head is starting to pound dully. The loss of their comfortable evening together hurts, too, like standing barefoot amongst broken glass. 

“I guess so,” Pidge says, but she sounds pretty dubious about it.

“It’s not going to be butterflies and rainbows,” Keith says tiredly. “Even if she’s fine, even if she’s herself… God knows what she’s been through, saving us. He has to be able to deal with reality. He needs to respect she’s going to have changed."

“Sure,” Pidge says. She doesn’t turn a hair at Keith’s oblique reference to their fears for Allura, Shiro notices, but then she wouldn’t: she has far more understanding of quintessence, the rift, and alternate realities than any of them; and after all, she’s the woman who’d put a kill switch in Shiro’s arm. No doubt she’s thought the risks of Allura returning through in far more detail than they have, gamed out different scenarios.

She sees a lot. She looks between them now, shrewdly, and says, “And Keith - what-ifs and sacrifices? You would say that. I know what you did at the battle of Naxzela. Matt told me.”

Keith stiffens, abrupt enough for the wolf to let out a low growl, his head swinging towards Keith, and Shiro sits up straighter, looking between them, frowning. “What?” he says. “What’s - Keith, what’s she talking about? What happened at Naxzela?”

He has those memories, fogged more by the speed and urgency of how everything had unfolded than that it had been the clone living through it. Keith had been with the Blades, then, Voltron without him, they’d had their own missions; but Voltron had been in touch with both the Blade of Marmora and the rebels the whole time, surely? Apart from when they’d been stuck on the planet.

Something loosens its way free of his memories. After everything, after Lotor’s intervention and his request for amnesty, after Voltron had tumbled back into five battered lions and five exhausted paladins... Keith had been in space with them. Piloting a Galra ship, alone, and Shiro - the clone - had never asked why, how he’d come to be separated from the rest of the Blades and leading the rebel fleet, what he’d been doing.

“Keith?” he says again.

“I’m gonna go check on Lance,” Keith says. He doesn’t look at either of them, gets up and hurries away in the direction Hunk and Veronica took Lance. Kosmo gets up too, shakes himself, levels Shiro with a scathing look, and pads after him.

“It wouldn’t have worked, by the way!” Pidge yells after him.

“What did he do?” Shiro says, turning on her, desperate. He should ask Keith, should give him the chance, but Keith’s gone without so much as a goodbye, and somehow he knows that if he asks Keith, Keith won’t tell him. No, worse: Shiro could find out anyway, Matt will tell him if Pidge doesn’t, but he can’t not ask Keith himself, and Keith will _lie_ ; and this thing he thinks they’ve been bringing into being will collapse, like clay forming slow and smooth into a vase on a potter’s wheel abandoned, falling back into a lifeless clump of earth.

She closes her eyes and bows her head for a minute, looking suddenly regretful. “Matt told me… you remember in that fight, we had to stop Haggar, but her ship’s defences were too strong?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says slowly. He doesn’t like where this is going.

“Lotor fired on her. The only thing we ever had to thank him for, pretty much. But before that… Keith was gonna fly his ship straight into her shields.”

Shiro feels numb. “But he would’ve -”

“Yeah.”

He takes a deep breath. He’s nodding, nonsensically, and he makes himself stop. He’s tense everywhere, shock and denial and regret and horror all mixing in him until he doesn’t know what he’s feeling, the whiplash of a calm, successful day and a pleasant evening, turning into this revelation. “I need to talk to him.”

“Yeah,” Pidge says, with an odd emphasis, and when he looks up at her she’s looking back at him with far too much understanding. She says, “I’m heading back to Green. You should go.”

***

Keith hasn’t gone after Lance and Hunk. Shiro doesn’t know if he ever really intended to, the yellow lion already lifted off from Mahani and zooming back to Atlas with them both aboard, Red following after her paladin. It doesn’t take long to figure out where he must be but by the time Shiro finds him, a slight dark figure leaning against Black’s paw, his initial feelings have curdled into something ugly and afraid. He feels sick at the thought of Keith setting himself at death, all alone, and thinking so little of it he’d never mentioned it to any of them; never told Shiro how close he’d come to losing him forever.

As he gets closer Kosmo swings his head around to Shiro and blinks promptly away, and if Shiro hadn’t felt himself gearing up for an emotional scene, now he knows Keith is, anyway.

“Pidge told me,” he says quietly. Keith doesn’t look up at him and Shiro steps closer, aching, needing to be near him. It’s ridiculous, Naxzela was years and years ago and Shiro has had more than enough proof that Keith is here, real, alive, since then; they’d had even closer calls, the hospital vigil over Keith after Black’s plummet to earth, but he can’t help it. He wants to touch, but Keith is radiating such prickliness he doesn’t dare. He knows this defensiveness well, has seen Keith turn it on hundreds of people over the years, but never Shiro: not since Shiro came over to him in an Arizona schoolyard and said _hey, your turn, buddy_. He says more insistently, “She told me you were going to fly into Haggar’s shield.” 

Keith still doesn’t turn to him and Shiro hears his voice start to rise. “She told me about your _suicide run_ , Keith. _Keith_. Will you look at me? Why would you do that?”

Keith does face him then, and he looks resolute and defiant, eyes glittering, but he’s so raw underneath it. This is how he looked then, Shiro realises, so sudden and awful it makes him shake: this is the look Keith had on his face when he was flying towards his death. To do what do be done, to protect them all; because Shiro knows Keith. He knows why. 

Keith smiles, a twisted thing, seeing Shiro’s recognition. “I didn’t want to,” he says. “I thought it was necessary. I thought… it’d be worth it.”

“That’s not an acceptable trade,” Shiro says hoarsely. He can’t help himself, he has to try even if he’s pushed away, but when he reaches out Keith lets him touch his shoulder, accepts the useless, scant effort at the comfort he should have had at the time. Shiro wants to blame the clone; he wants to say he’d have seen, asked, given Keith the care he needed, but he knows that’s flattering himself. The clone had thought he was Shiro; maybe there’s some reality out there where it was all different, but Shiro will never be able to say for sure that he would’ve acted differently. 

“You know it was,” Keith says. He moves, slumping harder against Black like he can’t hold himself up, and Shiro’s hand falls away. “You’d died for this fight. I didn’t know that then, but - _you died_. Allura died for it. Millions of others across the universe, for ten thousand years. Why not me?”

“Because -“ Shiro says, and he has nothing left. The status quo he’s been in with his friends the last five years was hurting him with loneliness and fear, the arrangement he and Keith have had the last couple of weeks was drowning his heart while it satisfied his body, and this feels like the last moment he has to turn things around, to save his own life. “You know why it’s different to me. Keith, I -“

“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare,” Keith says, an eruption, for all it comes out low and anguished, and Shiro reels back. 

“You’re angry with me,” he says, and as soon as he realises it he doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before. 

Keith’s eyes are snapping now and he pushes off Black to crowd up against Shiro. It should be menacing, maybe means to be menacing; Keith’s a warrior, he’s done the darkest covert missions he doesn’t think Shiro knows about, and he’s the only one who holds Shiro’s heart in the palm of his hand now: but their bodies know each other and when Shiro stops giving ground Keith’s hips slot up to his softly, their chests brushing. The heat of emotion burning between them is anything and everything, like Shiro’s world bursting out into the whole spectrum of colour after years of gray. 

Keith’s voice is lost, like he can’t hold onto the anger either. “I told you I loved you,” he says, and his hand when Shiro grabs it between them and presses their twined fingers to Keith’s chest is shaking, vibrations moving perceptibly through the finer touch sense of Shiro’s Altean hand. “I told you again, and you told me you loved me too but you needed time, and then you moved to Green and nothing was the same between us for half a decade.”

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, and if laying his beating heart at Keith’s feet would help the pain every part of him is radiating, he’d do it. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready. Every time I looked at you -“ He lifts his hand again. Keith jerks away at first but then holds himself still and Shiro skims his fingertips as gently as he can over the scar he’d put there.

“It was never your fault,” Keith says almost inaudibly. “That was worth it, too. Every moment, every injury, thinking... I thought we were going to die together.”

“Did you?” Shiro says, forcing it out through the pain. “I thought I was going to kill you. I still dream about it.”

Keith closes his eyes and Shiro cups his face, helplessly, his heart aching when Keith turns into the touch with a low sound, as if he doesn’t want to but can’t help it either. “Why didn’t you talk to me? I kept waiting for you to talk to me.”

“You _left_ ,” Shiro says, anguished, but he finds that thread of resentment in himself too, and he lets it show. “We were at war, and the minute we weren’t you were gone! You’re the one who left, Keith -” 

Off with the Blades, in parts of space the nascent Coalition hadn’t even been able to contact or too busy on Daizabaal to answer messages with more than one-liners confirming he was okay. Shiro had understood, grieved, locked it away in the over-full part of his mind where things he didn’t want to think about went; and then, by the time the first anniversary had rolled around, there’d been Curtis.

Keith’s eyes fly open and the way he looks at Shiro is honest surprise and dawning realisation that drains Shiro’s anger in a moment. He feels empty in its wake, but not badly; like at the end of a good session of ashkera, as pure and clean as his battered soul is ever going to get. “I didn’t think… I didn’t know,” he says.

“I knew if we started something, it would be everything,” Shiro murmurs. “I had to be ready, and then I was, but you… I thought you’d changed your mind.”

“No,” Keith says, and Shiro catches the tear that falls from his eye with his thumb. “I never changed my mind.”

Shiro wants to kiss him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life, not spaceflight or a ship of his very own or a warm hand to hold in the night. But he has to know, first, and he squeezes Keith’s hand where they’re still entangled and says, “Keith, what we’ve been doing… when you kissed me on New Altea, I didn’t take you out there for that, you know?”

“I know,” Keith says, and the heaviness is thankfully leavened by a trace of humour in the way his mouth twitches, the shared memory of the wonder and desire of that first time in the way his gaze meets Shiro’s then drops to Shiro’s mouth. “I figured that out. But by the time I did I’d committed, and you were telling me yes.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have,” Shiro murmurs and Keith’s gaze flies up to his again, startled. He rubs his thumb over Keith’s hand and says, “This isn’t casual to me. It never could’ve been.”

Keith makes a soft, hurt noise, and the way his fingers twine and cling to Shiro’s makes him ache so desperately. He says, “Shiro -”

“I love you,” Shiro says, and it’s everything, relief and need and a plea, riding over a cliff and soaring into space, finding wings. “Keith, I still love you.”

He doesn’t know what he thought would happen. Fireworks and music swelling and a kiss as the curtains close; happily ever after, the way he once thought maybe was their reward for getting through everything else.

Keith shakes his head. He’s crying for real now, tears glistening steadily down, and Shiro’s cheeks are wet too. “It’s not that easy. Do you think I’ve been waiting for you all these years, watching you in a marriage to someone else, hoping it wouldn’t work out? Hoping you were unhappy? I’ve built a life, Shiro. So have you. Maybe - maybe we were only ever supposed to be one of the what-ifs.”

Keith’s always been more than that equivocation to Shiro. His might-have-been, his big regret; when he splits his life into before the war and after the war, it’s before Keith and after Keith he means. 

He leans in and Keith wraps an arm around his neck bruisingly tight as he presses their foreheads together and asks, quiet in the space between their breaths, “Do you still love me?”

Keith lips tremble, so close to Shiro’s. “I’ve always loved you,” he whispers, and Shiro’s heart soars; briefly. “I don’t trust you. Not with this.”

“Not with you,” Shiro says, and misery clenches his body tight. He feels sick again. He steps back and Keith lets go off his hand, reluctantly. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it? When it was just sex it was okay, but… you don’t trust me with yourself. You don’t want to be with me.”

“I don’t know,” Keith bursts out, and when he flies back hard into Shiro’s arms and clings Shiro hugs him tight, buries his face in the campfire-smoke smell of Keith’s hair, feeling his face crumple. Keith’s hands are all over him, on his hips and back and shoulders, stroking his neck and sliding into his hair, as desperate as when they’re in bed together but so horribly different. As if Keith thinks he needs to memorise him; as if it’s the last time, and maybe it is, because Shiro knows they won’t be sleeping together again, not now they’ve acknowledged this pit between them. “I don’t know what to do,” Keith says, his breath warm against Shiro’s throat, his tears dampening Shiro’s skin.

“It’s okay,” Shiro says. He doesn’t know how, but it will be; it usually is, because it always has to be. The paladins of Voltron have to be more than they’d choose if they only had to think about themselves. “Keith, if you… we have to keep looking for Allura.”

“I’m not going to leave again,” Keith says, pulling back a little, and his tone has recovered some of his usual assurance. The aching familiarity of it is bittersweet. Shiro knows that Keith doesn’t go back on his word. He puts his hand to Shiro’s face this time and Shiro nuzzles it, desperate for it, kisses the base of his palm. “When you asked me for time -”

“I know, I know,” Shiro says, and that’s not unfair: Keith deserves that much from him. But they have to be on the ship together, and Shiro has fucked up enough, and he can’t help, without knowing what he’s really asking for, “Keith, please -”

“God, Shiro,” Keith says, and then they’re kissing, deep and yearning. Shiro strokes his cheek and sinks into it, tasting salt on Keith’s soft lips and eager tongue. Keith was right, he has to memorise it, a new standard for passion Keith set in his life without even trying; it’s intense and endless, Keith’s mouth perfect under his and his body as close as they can get, it’s sustaining his heart and breaking it at the same time. It’s _until we meet again_.

“Don’t give up on me,” Keith whispers against his cheek, and Shiro closes his eyes and takes one last sacred second of holding Keith, being held.

“I never will,” he swears, and they part.


	2. Chapter 2

Unsurprisingly, he can’t sleep. He needs to, and he has at least a dozen reports in his inbox so tedious that by all rights they should induce coma, so he should be able to, eventually. But tomorrow’s a new day, and tonight he can still feel Keith in his arms. He’s not ready to let go of that yet.

His quarters have an expansive window, but the observation deck at the top of the ship has a 360 view. He brews one of the calming Olkari teas and buries himself under blankets in the empty room, listening to the quiet whir of hygiene robots moving through the corridor every so often. Atlas is controlling them now, and he’s noticed with some amusement to a higher standard of cleanliness than her crew had programmed in.

Bringing his mind to her brings her to his mind and he sighs and lets her in a little, trying to convey that it’s been a big day and he’s simply feeling a lot of complex human emotions, but it’s nothing for her to worry about. Atlas nudges him anxiously, and as he soothes her he tries to remember what he does have, rather than dwelling on what he doesn’t. He believes he and Keith can rekindle the bond they used to have, and that’s not a mere consolation prize; he’s missed Keith so badly he’s only now realising how much, how he’d locked himself away from the simple, necessary connection of deep friendship.

Atlas seems to glean that his thoughts are about Keith. Sweetly but alarmingly, she conveys an offer to address Black about her recalcitrant paladin; Shiro thinks he talks her down, and reminds himself to ask Pidge about the curiosity of Atlas being able to communicate with the lions.

He goes back to gazing into the beauty of beyond. He tries to do this every so often, remind himself that space is more than a picturesque Interstate 15. Stars are all around, shining their light and telling their stories. He breathes in deep, against the tears that want to come back to his eyes, and reminds himself of miracles.

***

When he wakes up in the observation room after a few hours’ fitful sleep, first he thinks about just staying there all day. 

Then he thinks about creeping back to his quarters, putting on the armour of Commander Shirogane. He could retreat back into work, bury himself in endless Coalition drop-ins on tired planets telling himself it’s his duty, go back to the low-risk path of his surface life, stay professional for the rest of this journey. Meet up with the other paladins once a year at whatever Lance and Hunk decree will replace the anniversary dinners with Allura back. Meet someone else, throw another marriage onto the pyres of his broken brain and silence.

He and Keith had talked about their parents’ funerals, once. It was a little morbid but they hadn’t known each other very long then and Shiro had been eager to welcome and reciprocate any sign of growing trust. They’d talked about the small funeral for Shiro’s parents: Shiro doesn’t remember it well, he’d been too young, but it had been full of close family friends and the small community they lived in, who’d appreciated Shiro’s mom’s bookkeeping and his dad’s pickled plums. Keith’s dad’s funeral had been attended by his fire service colleagues and their families; Shiro figures it must have been hard to get close to people with a half-alien kid and a missing alien wife, but Keith had talked about it as meaningful, full of people who’d valued his dad and honoured his sacrifice, with homecooked food everywhere he looked and a dozen embraces to cry in, if he’d wanted them.

If Shiro died now he’d be on front pages all over the Coalition. Ten thousand people would come to Shiro the Hero’s memorial service, diarised neatly by their assistants, one eye on the next meeting. The eulogy would talk in glowing terms about his astroexploration record, his one-time leadership of Voltron, his important job in the war and afterward as Atlas’ commander. Everyone would agree what a sad, sad loss it was, and carry right on.

Who would close down a bar afterwards, talking and laughing and remembering Shiro the man? 

He thinks about getting over himself; sighs, untangles from his four blankets, and goes to get breakfast with the paladins.

***

Sympathy for others at least helps drag Shiro out of his mood: Lance is a tragic, whimpering ruin, with Hunk serving up increasingly improbable and disgusting-looking hangover remedies.

“This one is from Meadyaw in sector ziue-tradescant,” he says brightly. “It tastes awful, but it really works well in controlled tests!”

It has a green-black oilslick sheen in the glass and it’s smoking big gulps of acrid grey. Personally Shiro would rather die of a hangover than put it anywhere near a dead-animal mouth and roiling stomach. Lance looks like he might throw up, or burst into tears, or throw up then burst into tears. “On _what_?” he wails and puts his head on the table. Pidge pulls him up to slide a folded-up sweater underneath his face, the compassion of the gesture slightly undercut by the sharp yank she gives to his hair as she does it; Shiro’s not sure whether deliberate or not.

“I know it doesn’t look the best,” Hunk says. “Romelle found it really hard to photograph for her blog on hangover cures of the universe.”

“I read that one. It was good,” Keith says. His gaze met Shiro’s cautiously as soon as he stepped in; Shiro is trying not to only have eyes for him but it’s hard. He wonders what Keith is thinking, whether he spent the night wrestling with all they’d said as Shiro did. Keith kicks out the stool beside him and Shiro takes the offer with a grateful rush inside him, returning Keith’s uncertain sideways smile. 

“I know you did,” Hunk says. “Ezor left a really harsh comment.”

Shiro swipes a piece of hot buttered toast off Keith’s plate and lets the conversation swim over him. This is okay: he can enjoy this. He’s welcome here.

“Okay,” Lance says eventually, heaving himself up. “I’m going back to bed, and I’m only getting up if the alert goes off. Nobody bother me.”

“It won’t go off,” Pidge says. She glances at Shiro. “I asked Coran to hold us in place, Shiro, is that okay? I want to work on the device a little more today.”

“That’d be helpful for me too,” Keith puts in. “Acxa’s asked for a rendezvous on Blades’ business. She can wormhole to our location if we’re at a fixed point.”

He shrugs. “Sure. Whatever you need.”

“Thanks!” she chirps, steals Keith’s last piece of toast, and heads out after Lance, who doesn’t seem to know whether to grasp his head or hold onto the wall as he staggers back across the paladins’ communal lounge to his room. 

“I’m gonna see if I can find any takers for this,” Hunk says cheerfully, gesturing to his hangover concoction. 

Shiro watches it belch another kick of smoke. “Good luck,” he says. 

“So,” Keith says, when they’re alone. 

“Yeah,” Shiro says, feeling foolish. God, only yesterday he’d have probably gone in for a kiss, seen if maybe he could coax Keith to bed. Already in hindsight it’s hard to believe that he ever thought it was a good idea to fuck Keith without talking everything out, like a fog clearing. In retrospect it feels so obviously doomed, believing that anything they could have together could have been easy.

“How did you sleep?” Keith says.

_Fine_. It’s on the tip of his tongue. It’s what he always says.

“Not so well,” he says, and makes himself meet Keith’s gaze.

“Yeah,” Keith says. His chin is ducked, looking up at Shiro, and the look in his eyes is one that hasn’t been there for a very long time, open and limpid. 

“Are we okay?” he says. 

“We’re gonna be,” he says and when Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder, the touch feeling more earned than any of the sex, Keith covers it with his and smiles.

***

“Hi, Coran,” Shiro says, settling into Veronica’s seat, next to Coran’s at the helm. Coran’s working two viewscreens; one the Atlas’ usual piloting data and another which Shiro thinks is linked to Pidge’s device, blank right now.

“Hello, Shiro, what can I do for you?” Coran says, visibly dredging up the energy for the smile he summons to his face. He looks tired. Shiro glances over his shoulder as subtly as he can and Iverson gives him a grimace and a quick shake of the head; Shiro knows they’ve remained friendly even with Coran on New Altea, and it worries him that Iverson clearly sees a problem.

“Nothing today, I thought I’d come and check on how things are going,” he says, and then reconsiders, wants to be more careful: “I mean, how you’re doing.” Coran brightens at that, looking surprised, and guilt tears at Shiro: is it really so unfamiliar to Coran that Shiro should come to him just to ask about him, to chat? They’d done it often in the earliest days on the Castle: Coran had been the only other adult, albeit one that stretched the definition compared to the more serious senior officers Shiro had been used to. That had trailed off as Allura had become more confident in her leadership and especially as Shiro had realised how much Keith had grown up, that he was no cadet any more, his experience of losing Shiro and chasing the blue lion more of a crucible than piloting a Garrison space mission ever could have been; he’d started to confide in Keith more, then. But he’d always felt that he and Coran had retained a special bond, a mix of the fatherly protectiveness Coran had always shown all the paladins, and close camaraderie as a leader: Shiro’s never forgotten the shining feeling of Coran ordaining him as Atlas’ captain, having that much faith in him in their moment of most desperate need.

“I’m fine,” Coran says, but it’s the wistful tone he always uses to talk about Alfor and the Castle. Coran’s planet was restored, but there were limits to Allura’s creation: it’s still ten thousand years after everyone he knew and loved died, and Shiro knows well how a position of power can make people reluctant to try to get close, hard to let them if they do.

“Really?” he says, trying to be gentle, and Coran’s brave smile crumples.

“Having such hope, but not knowing how long it need last me, is difficult,” he admits quietly, and Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder. “I want to see my Princess again. I want so much to see her proud of what we’ve built on New Altea.”

Shiro hears the worry in his voice. “She will be,” he says. “Coran, how could she not? You’ve done wonderful things there. You’ve made your people safe, you’re flourishing. Your art, your science… the whole Coalition looks to you for hope. You’ve honoured her.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Coran says, “after I let Alfor down - I lost his _daughter_ ,” and Shiro tries not to be alarmed as his eyes fill with tears. A pack of tissues hits him on the shoulder and bounces off. He picks it up off the floor, with a dirty look at Iverson out of Coran’s line of sight, and offers it to Coran.

“Coran, _no_ ,” Shiro says, and this at least is a familiar discussion: every anniversary dinner ends up here, at Coran’s biggest fear and irremediable regret; and every dinner Shiro hides his own regrets and tries to justify the unjustifiable, if it will give Coran a year’s more peace. “She _chose_. She traded herself for the universe, like her father before her. She was - she _is_ the woman you both raised her to be.”

“It’s so good to hear you talk about her like this,” Coran says, and blows his nose noisily into a tissue. “As present, alive. I want our people to know her like that, as more than a story. As our queen.”

“You’re looking forward to retirement, then,” Shiro teases gently. There hadn’t really been any doubt: Coran isn’t the type to try to cling to rulership. Shiro doesn’t think he would have accepted his role on New Altea at all if he hadn’t considered it his duty and he’s always styled himself no more than regent, for all it’s to a dead monarchy. It’s no surprise he’ll give it up gladly for Allura.

“Oh, yes,” Coran says immediately, with a soft smile. “Once Allura is ready, I shall retire to a woodland cabin, or perhaps a beachside hut, and complete my memoirs, ‘The True Tales of a Humble Hero’. Of course, I’ll visit the city regularly. Pop-Pop Coran can’t be away too long.”

“Well,” Shiro says, after a moment. The idea of Lance and Allura with kids of their own is scary: Shiro’s the one who was married, and he’d never felt he was settled enough for that. Uncle Shiro sounds pretty good, though, and he’ll take that for now. “That sounds great, Coran. I’ll be first in line for an autographed copy.”

***

He wants to look in on Pidge but on the way he checks in on the rest of the labs again, trying to push off the thought that he’s looking for distractions from missing Keith. They’d been lovers for barely a week, not seen each other much for years before that: it’s ridiculous to be longing for him, body and soul, after a morning apart.

He lets the engineers talk him into spending a day soon working on Atlas’ transformation, and talks them out of ‘borrowing’ the Altean crystal in his arm to run tests. They’ve developed alternative power sources, safe ones with absolutely no risk of throwing Shiro into cardiac arrest from overload ( _I guarantee it_ , Sam had said earnestly), but he prefers having the original. 

He drops in on the anthropologists, who are hard at work categorising and analysing the material and information they’d got from the Mahanians. He offers some of his own observations, and can’t help reacting to the pleased surprise in their eyes as they glance at each other. 

“What?” he says, only half-joking. “I pay attention.”

“Of course you do, Commander,” Officer D^tl says, her triple eyelids blinking rapidly in reassurance. “You don’t usually manage to spend much time in the community on a visit is all. It’s great! You had a good time last night?”

Keith in his arms; crying. 

It’s not their fault. He suppresses a sigh and says, “Yeah.”

He’s on his way to Pidge’s lab when he gets word Acxa’s ship is boarding and decides impulsively to go down to greet her. He tells himself it’s his duty to a senior member of one of the Coalition’s founding organisations, but he can’t shake an awkward feeling of meeting the family. It’s stupid; he knows Axca well, and anyway Krolia’s the one he should be worrying about having liked him fine up until he presented himself as a suitor for Keith.

He’d thought, anyway, but Acxa barely deigns to look away from fussing Kosmo when he reaches the hangar, and when she finally does she gives him a flat stare that reminds him unsettlingly of why Lotor had chosen her as one of his generals. “Commander,” she says, so freezingly it’s completely obvious to him that she knows everything and approves of nothing.

He glances at Keith, silent beside her, and takes stumbling refuge in formality. “Senior Blade Axca. Welcome aboard the Atlas,” he says.

“Delighted to be here,” she says through her teeth. “Keith, is there somewhere we can talk?”

“We can go to the paladin quarters,” he says, flicking his gaze at Shiro in a way that might be understanding. “See you later, Shiro.”

Shiro tries not to run away, although he could; Kosmo will probably jump them up the several levels to Keith’s room. He glances anyway as the door to the hangar slides shut behind him and is surprised and gripped by unease to see them standing together, talking, her hand outflung towards Shiro in a way that makes it perfectly clear what their topic of conversation is. God, he hopes she isn’t here to give Keith some sort of intervention. He’d love to know what she’s saying about him.

“- think your having relations with him was a mistake -” Acxa says, as clear as if he was still standing next to her. Shiro squawks, smiles weakly at the odd look MFE Pilot 6-arata gives him as it bounces past, and scratches the offending earpiece out.

He’s confused Atlas. _That’s a private conversation!_ he tries to think at her frantically.

She still doesn’t get it. Hadn’t he wanted to hear it?

_Sometimes people want things they can’t have_ he thinks sourly.

She seems to understand that. Like - and she projects an image straight into his brain, the crystal in his arm buzzing.

It’s Keith, naked, hard; she must have got it from one of the times they had sex in Shiro’s quarters. She zooms the image in on his dick, helpfully.

Shiro sighs. “Yeah,” he says out loud. He hopes to hell all this stuff she’s apparently collecting is being stored in whatever passes for her Altean memory banks, and not a drive somewhere for some poor data scientist to stumble on. “Like that.”

***

There’s a couple of acolytes working in Pidge’s lab, hoping for a moment of her attention; she waves them away when Shiro comes in and they droop out with resentful looks at him. 

One of her little fluffy pets floats to him and nuzzles under his chin and he strokes it gently. She and her mother have been crossbreeding them carefully. It’s an experiment in alien genetics, Pidge says when anyone asks her about it, a touch of a blush on her cheeks, but even if she doesn’t want to admit it they’re riotous multicolours now and even more inquisitive and affectionate; Shiro knows they’ve started to find homes across the Coalition helping to care for old or vulnerable people who need companionship and comfort.

He comes close to Pidge and peers over her shoulder at the two open laptops and three data screens, all hooked up to the device and running incomprehensible streams of numbers and symbols. The device itself is small, only about the size of a briefcase, but Shiro guesses it can be when it hooks into Atlas’s enormous processing power and range of sensors.

“How’s it coming?” he says, making sure to keep his voice low and gentle: she startles easy when she’s deep in her work.

Sure enough her attention twitches to him rabbit-like and he offers her a smile and taps the lid of the nearest laptop. “Progress?”

“Much,” she says succinctly. “My upgrades today should increase the accuracy of identifying the quintessence surges to almost perfect and shift the predictive factors exponentially.”

He says, “Which means…”

“I should be able to start plotting a better route for the Atlas between hot spots,” she says. “It’ll speed up the search.”

“Amazing,” Shiro says simply. “Seriously, Pidge. You’ve whipped this up out of nothing.”

“Not nothing,” she says, and scowls. “Damn alchemy. I _hate_ having to mess with this stuff. It doesn’t work like it should.”

“Well, you’re doing great anyway,” Shiro says.

“Thanks,” Pidge says. She glances at her screens, taking in more with a glance than Shiro would understand if he spent ten years in university; it talks to her the way the controls of any kind of craft do to him. “This needs to process. You want to power your arm down? I haven’t checked it over in a while.”

He couldn’t be any safer than in Pidge’s lab, in deep space, inside his ship that responds to him on a thought, but there’s still an instinctive disquiet to quash as he turns it off, trying not to let it interfere in the sustained intention required. The prosthetic doesn’t really have a weight of its own, not with the force that acts between the anchor and forearm, but having it off is still unbalancing.

He pushes down the vulnerability and braces his other hand to hop awkwardly up onto the counter, leaning over to try to look at what Pidge is doing with the internal mechanics of his arm without getting in her way. It’s never gone wrong yet, but he likes to have a working understanding of how it operates, as much as he can, in case it ever does when he’s away from other help. 

“I’d forgotten what it was like to work under the pressure of the universe on the line,” Pidge muses as she works. “I’d kind of missed it.”

Shiro makes a polite noise; sometimes she’s just filling silence while her mind is on other things and she doesn’t actually want a conversation. She glances at him after a moment though and he ventures, “Have you thought about what happens if the lions stay?”

“And the gang’s all back together?” she says wistfully. “I’m glad Green is with me again. We had plans, you know? We were going to study the material the lions are made from, see if we could figure out how the comet traversed realities.”

It makes him feel warm inside. “You thought you could figure out how to find Allura?”

“Yeah,” Pidge says, and grins at him. “Until they left. I kept busy, but now they’re back… she’s like the piece I was missing without even realising it.”

“That’s great,” he says. He knows just the feeling she means: he’d felt the same when Atlas had jolted back into his mind, the descant melody to the choir of voices in his life, complete without, more beautiful with, telling a whole story.

“I hadn’t really thought about it so clearly,” she says, pausing before seeming to shake it off, bending back to her work. He goes to clasp his hands together in his lap, even though his arm is right there on the table in front of him; for a moment the absence is scary and then he settles his hand on his knee, rubbing his fingers against the worn cloth of his uniform pants. “Being Green Paladin again, yes, for sure…”

“But a paladin of Voltron is another story?”

“Maybe?” she says. She looks at him again and he smiles at her gently, trying to make clear he’s not judging anything she’s saying. He’s had enough long nights of the soul wondering about his place in the world, never mind the long nights of Black’s soul, or what passes for it; he’s not going to knock someone else’s existential doubt. 

“The Voltron Coalition became the Galactic Coalition for a reason,” he says. “Voltron the weapon isn’t needed any more; everyone agreed that was for the best. The universe is well defended against the rise of any other conquering culture now.”

She sighs. “Yeah. And it’s important to me to work for the Coalition as it is now. Things being shared, moving forward together. Everyone else has their own thing too. But if that was what Allura wanted…”

His arm lets out a low hum. Shiro flinches protectively but Pidge is leaning over it with a happy sound of her own and that’s his signal to sit quietly and wait.

It’s kind of nice. He can’t be expected to do anything while his arm is being fixed: it’s okay to just sit here on Pidge’s workbench and watch quiet but supreme skill unfold. A couple of the fluffs come and nestle in on his lap and he strews his fingers through their soft fur, letting it soothe him, weirdly more conscious right now with his arm powered down of the usual subtle differences of sensation between his flesh hand and the prosthetic. One of Pidge’s robot followers bulls its way onto his knee as well, chirping at the fluffs, and they squeak back at it but make room; it pecks at his thigh until he pets it too, cool metal against his fingers, rubbing against him appreciatively.

“Okay,” she says finally, closing up the components compartment with a decisive snap, and they go through the routine of Shiro powering the arm up with a steady thought, the energy field bursting back into pale blue life. Shiro wiggles his fingers and clenches his fist and rolls his wrist as he’s told, stretching back into his arm with a suffusion of relief.

“Okay, you’re all done,” she says, one eye already back on her screens. 

Shiro lingers, feeling like a patient in a doctor’s room about to admit to an embarrassing ailment on their way out the door. He says awkwardly, “Pidge, about the other night. Naxzela.”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah, okay. You guys talked?”

“Yeah,” he says and then can’t manage anything else. Pidge looks at him and grimaces at whatever’s on his face. He feels numb all over again when he thinks about it. There wouldn’t even have been enough of a body for them to pick up. Keith would have been stardust. That’s a nice idea: for many, many years in the future, when Keith has lived the happy and full life he deserves; with Shiro beside him, maybe, although that’s more than Shiro deserves. 

“It can’t have been that bad,” she says, and swivels back to her machines. “You guys seemed okay this morning.”

Shiro sighs. “Yeah. Pidge, how long have you known about this? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t _Matt_ tell me?”

“Ask him,” she says. “I didn’t know until after the war. Why would I have told you? It was in the past, we were supposed to be done with all that. And you and Keith weren’t close any more.”

“I wouldn’t say we weren’t close,” Shiro protests reflexively.

“He did,” she says bluntly and Shiro winces. It hurts, to know that Keith had been saying that to their friends; he’d never meant for Keith to feel like that. Their drifting apart had felt natural to him. If anything he’d always thought Keith had left first, and it’s only after the conversation last night that he’d realised Keith had felt Shiro pulling away first.

“I didn’t do enough to stay in touch with any of you,” he says quietly. “What we shared is important. I don’t want to lose that again.”

“I know it was hard on you,” she says. “I don’t think I realised how hard until Green left. We all have to make more effort, yeah?”

“Of course,” he says softly.

“Good,” she says. “Because I have a new project in mind. I want to study the lions and the comet material, like me and Green planned. And their sentience. So I want to include Atlas as well. Okay?”

“Sounds pretty alchemical,” Shiro teases.

She makes a face. “Sufficiently advanced technology, right? It’s gotta be. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you will,” Shiro says. “I have faith in you.”

***

“Hey, so,” he says, awkwardly, finding Keith that evening on the observation deck, once Acxa has left. Keith is under a blanket, looking sleepy and soft, like seeing Acxa has comforted and rejuvenated him. He used to respond like that to Shiro, and Shiro promises himself that one day he will again. “It turns out, if you want to have a private Blades discussion, you should maybe have it in Black in future.”

“What?” Keith says blankly. Shiro gestures around himself aimlessly and understanding dawns on Keith’s face, followed by a blush. “- Oh. Walls have ears, right. Uh, how much did you hear?”

“I stopped as quick as I could,” Shiro says hastily. Atlas is shimmering in the back of his mind, offended, like a toddler who wants him to frame her scribbles on the wallpaper instead of painting over them with military-issue magnolia matte. “Sorry. Just, um. _Relations_ with me being a mistake?”

He’s almost holding his breath. He doesn’t want to hear Keith saying Acxa was right.

“Oh,” Keith says, wincing. He sits up, the blanket falling over him in such a way as to suggest the body underneath, somehow more enticing than if he were simply naked; although Shiro’s fevered imagination has no trouble making him so, improbable as it would be for Keith to be stripping off in a public area of the ship. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Shiro says, crushed.

“Yeah, that’s what they think,” Keith says quickly. He makes space on the wide, low daybed he’s lazing on - coincidentally the one Shiro had slept on just a couple of nights ago, when the poles of his world were still turning topsy-turvy and he was having to reacclimate to everything about Keith he’d thought he’d known - and Shiro perches on the edge, conscious of the space between them to the nearest inch. “They have a point. It was… I was stupid to think I could sleep with you without it getting out of control.”

Keith is so beautiful framed against the stars, so like the kid in the desert he once was, searching for his place among them. “So why did you?” Shiro asks softly.

“Because I want you,” Keith says steadily. Shiro feels heat roll through him at the starkness of the present tense but Keith has turned away from him, staring out of the window, and all Shiro can see is the familiar angles of his profile. “I thought it was worth it to have you. As much as I could get.”

He wants to say Keith can have all of him, everything he wants, but he bites down on it. They’ve been over this and Shiro had said he’d give Keith time; he’s not going to go back on that. They’ve done enough letting their bodies do the talking for now. He stares at his hands instead and could almost think he imagines the soft touch to the nape of his neck, where he’s most sensitive, scratching delicately and apologetically through the short hair there.

“What,” he says, and clears his throat, forcing himself under as much discipline as he can conjure to sound normal. “What did she want? Do you have everything you need?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Keith says, and he sounds grateful for the subject change, graceless as it had been. “She just needed to discuss a few things I usually take care of. Supply routes through fara-tyarna sector, a new virus that seems to be capable of crossing species boundaries. And safe passage through that corner of space out by AT-28-X8J6, you know about that?”

“We’re monitoring it,” Shiro says. The Coalition might need to step in at some point in a once-local squabble that’s getting increasingly dangerous, but the planets involved haven’t signed up to the Coalition and the argument is still ongoing whether they have the authority to intervene; some feeling that they have nothing less than a moral duty to do so, while others fear taking the first steps into turning the Coalition away from a peaceful intergalactic body and into an expansionary force. Until then, all they can do is wait, and be ready to step in if one of the combatants asks for assistance. Shiro has his own preferences, but he doesn’t contribute them: bad enough to be a figurehead and a diplomat without turning politician. He adds fondly, “So much for not being indispensable.”

Keith sighs. “They could handle it if they had to. I’ve tried. But they’re still… they like having someone to follow.”

“When did you last get a vacation?” Shiro says.

“This last week is probably the closest I’ve gotten in years,” Keith says.

“Relaxing,” Shiro says dryly and Keith gives a startled laugh that makes Shiro feel warm and satisfied; even now Keith’s laughter is hard-won.

“It’s had its moments,” he says, his voice soft and maybe even a little flirty, enough for Shiro to let himself admire the way Keith stretches, completely natural and unselfconscious, his body moving lithe and long under the blanket. “But I can’t just take off when there’s so much to do. I do enjoy it. There’s so much need out there.”

“You’re not the only one who can do it,” Shiro says. He heaves himself more up on the daybed, leans against the slight curve of the window opposite Keith and props of his legs, and Keith flips the blanket over Shiro’s lap too without comment. Shiro smoothes it there, feeling the soft warmth of the geometric alien weave. “You have a right to rest. A life outside the job.”

“Look who’s talking,” Keith says, without rancour. “You took the Kerberos mission even though it would have been your last.”

Shiro gazes out at the space around them and bites his lip. “That was hardly altruism,” he says quietly. 

“There’s never been any sign of your disease coming back to this body?” Keith says. He’s leaning back against the window too and his eyes look glittering against the stars.

“No,” Shiro says. It’s true, as far as it goes; he still wakes with vivid sensations in his muscles, of weakness or trembling or phantom shooting agonies that make tears stand in his eyes and his breath come hard with pain and fear. But the disease that had dictated the course of his life, the rock he’d battered himself against his whole life, getting more and more jagged every year, is smoothed and shrunk into little more than a pebble in his shoe, reminder and warning. “I’d have told you if it had.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Keith says, his mouth twisting. “You never talked about it. Not even when you were trying to talk me into leading Voltron when you were gone.”

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Shiro says. He runs a hand through his hair, presses against the ache in his temple. “It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.”

“You were right, though. Even though when you… it was war. Someone had to lead.” He glances at Shiro and Shiro almost flinches at the tentative, friendly nudge of Keith’s foot against his under the blanket, presses back against him cautiously. “Shiro, I was sorry, about Black. You know that? That you lost all your connection to her. I never meant to take her from you.”

“You didn’t,” Shiro says. His memories from that time are so complicated, especially anything to do with the black lion. As it is he feels responsible for Black choosing Keith based on Shiro responding to his attempt from within her infinite void, for kicking Keith out of her when his clone had returned to the Castle, and for forcing Keith to fly her again when Haggar had turned the clone into a weapon. But he knows the final severing of his bond with her hadn’t been anyone’s fault; it had had to happen. “I’m glad she was safe with you. I’m glad you were safe with her.”

“I don’t want to take her away from the other lions if she doesn’t want to go,” Keith says softly. “I don’t know if they even can be apart long term.”

This is Keith: it’s okay for Shiro to acknowledge he doesn’t have all the answers. He shrugs. “I guess… when we find Allura,” he says.

“When we find Allura,” Keith echoes. He’s looking sleepy, his forehead smoothing out again after the heaviness of the conversation. The blanket rumples between them as he shifts, curling up small, and Shiro has to squash down the impulse to tuck him up, make sure he’s warm, taken care of. 

“I’ll leave you to it,” he says, going to get up. 

“You want to hear something about the constellations here?” Keith says abruptly. “Krolia’s people, the non-Galra side, they were from this quadrant. She remembers some of the stories her mother used to tell her. I could tell you. If you want.”

“Of course,” Shiro says instantly, sinking back down. He hadn’t known Krolia’s origins were in this part of space, but he’ll listen to anything Keith wants to say to him.

Keith takes his hand tentatively, draws him up to the viewscreen and guides his finger around a connect-the-dots of distant stars. “It’s this one here,” he starts. The figure he makes is nothing Shiro recognises, curves vaguely like two humanoid faces staring in the same direction; he commits it to memory and settles back to listen.

***

Hunk’s breakfast the next morning is a rare miss. Shiro manages to choke all of his down with a smile - he’s eaten considerably worse travelling around the universe, some of it not even deliberately intended to poison him - and turns to chat to Lance and Pidge, trying to help calm Lance down and manage his expectations now that Pidge has put the tool back online.

“Oh, Shiro, you don’t like it?” Hunk says, sounding massively disappointed, and Shiro turns back to find his bowl bearing a full helping of the porridgey, spicy… stuff.

“Uh…” he says, and Keith interrupts, “I thought it was great, Hunk.” He pats his stomach and gestures to Shiro’s empty bowl, in front of him. 

Shiro narrows his eyes at him, trying not to thrill at the intimacy of being teased, and kicks at him under the table. “Just savouring,” he says to Hunk, trying not to be distracted by Keith capturing Shiro’s ankle between both of his. 

He’s saved by the alert going off. 

“Yes!” Lance crows, leaping up. He grabs at Pidge and practically drags Keith off of his stool, chivvying them out to the tunnels to their lions. 

His excitement is touching and contagious. Shiro waves them off gladly and takes his bowl with him to the bridge, to dump the porridge in the trash there. 

***

Coran slumps back into his chair and Shiro puts a sympathetic hand on his shoulder as he activates the comms to the lions. “Thanks, Pidge. Come on home, guys. It’s still early days.”

Black flares her wings at them in salute and then is wheeling around, the other lions following in a ragged arrow formation, heading back to Atlas.

“You okay?” he says quietly and Coran manages a tired smile for him. 

“An alert so soon after Pidge’s upgrades is a good sign,” he says. Shiro glances over at Iverson, who’s already up, coming over to offer Coran a break from the bridge and, Shiro suspects, a fortifying glass of top-shelf liquor.

He’s not surprised to see Veronica getting up to go with them, smiling at her with tacit approval, so he’s startled when she comes in close and touches his arm.

“You have an urgent personal communication, Captain,” she says, and from her uncomfortable look he can guess what it is.

“Thank you,” he says, after a moment too long, and his main feeling is guilt that the emotions he probably ought to be feeling don’t come. “I’ll be in my quarters if you need me.”

***

He drops in on the paladins first, ready with sympathy or encouragement. The only one he finds is Hunk, frowning over the remains of breakfast, and Shiro resigns himself to having to shovel down another bowl.

“Where is everyone?” he says. “I thought I’d just check you guys were okay.”

“Sure,” Hunk says, smiling at him. “Pidge is in the lab, of course, and Keith took Lance swimming. He needed to release some tension.”

“Understandable,” Shiro says, taking a seat.

“This one really doesn’t work cold,” Hunk says sadly. Shiro can’t help a wince, hiding it obviously badly; Hunk catches him and says, “Oh, man. You hated it hot, too, didn’t you. Why didn’t you say?”

“It wasn’t, uh, to my personal taste,” Shiro offers.

Hunk rolls his eyes and scrapes the pan out into the disposal. “You’re not in a diplomatic banquet now, Shiro. You can tell me if it’s bad. It’s okay if it’s bad! Not every recipe works out. It kind of comes with the experimental intergalactic chef thing.”

“So, how’s that going?” Shiro says, fishing.

“It’s going fine, Shiro, which you would know if you read your shareholder reports,” Hunk says reproachfully.

“I read the last one,” Shiro lies. He’d come out of everything with a lot of backpay, by the time the Garrison had fixed up their payroll systems: Shiro’s not that great at spending money, what with living on a spaceship and having got used to having all of two outfits to his name. Investing in Hunk’s restaurants had been a good choice and now he has even more money he doesn’t really know what to do with. He should probably up his monthly donations to the Blade of Marmora again. “It had that picture of a chicken on the front.”

“It was a Cartusian roast Ecklefecken,” Hunk says.

“Delicious,” Shiro says. “So…”

“So, what?” Hunk says blankly. “You want to help wash up? I’m gonna make bread, get that good baking smell in here for when Lance gets back.”

“Sure,” Shiro says, getting up. Hunk is busily gathering up flour and lard and water. Him pottering around the kitchen while Shiro runs hot water into the sink and tidies up the glasses and bowls from breakfast ready to be washed feels domestic, nice. “So, you know. What’s your plans? You’re a busy guy already, and Yellow’s back…”

“Oh, I get it,” Hunk says, laughing, but it feels warm. He drops the breakfast-encrusted pan into the sink and hands Shiro the scrubbing brush. “Pidge told me you came around her lab Space Dadding her. Is this my big plans conversation?”

“I’m just taking an interest,” Shiro says. The water is pleasantly hot, the sensation subtly different between Shiro’s prosthetic and flesh hands, the bubbles iridescent in the blue-tinted light.

“I know, I know,” Hunk says, patting a floury hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “I missed this. But I’m good, you know? I’ll talk to Shay, we’ll figure something out. Yellow’s a bro, it’ll be cool.” 

Shiro doesn’t doubt it. Hunk has a big and loving family, a restaurant group across the whole universe full of people who look up to him, a great relationship. He and Shay don’t have kids yet; Shiro isn’t sure whether that’s a matter of choice, or not yet, or basic species incompatibility, and he isn’t going to ask. Hunk’s solid, probably doing the best out of all of them. 

“What about you?” Hunk says.

Shiro closes his eyes for a second, listening to the wood-on-glass sounds of Hunk mixing up ingredients methodically. Shiro’s always felt he should be good at baking, at least, since it’s just as rigorous a science as getting a ship up into space, but something always turns out wrong. He tried a few times, when he and Curtis were first getting together; eventually takeout had taken over, and Shiro had been put back on the washing up. 

He concentrates on getting the juice glasses really clean, shiny. All their technological advances and they still can’t stop water glasses getting covered in sticky fingerprints.

He says, “What about me?”

“What do you want to do?” Hunk prompts. 

“Me?” Shiro says.

“Yeah, you,” Hunk says, and the busy sounds of baking stop. “Everything’s gonna be different. You’ve got Atlas back the way she was meant to be. Why not make a change?”

“I work for the Coalition,” Shiro says, clutching his scrubbing brush. There was something meaningful in Hunk’s tone and the idea that he might know, or even just suspect, what’s been going on between Shiro and Keith, how much Shiro had fucked things up, makes him curl up inside like a salted slug. “It’s important work.”

“When was the last time you even took a vacation?” Hunk says. “Shiro. What do you _want_? When was the last time anyone asked you that?” and a glass breaks in Shiro’s Altean hand.

Shiro startles, jerks automatically and cuts a thin, shallow stripe across the back of his left hand with the shards, seeing red well up immediately. “Fuck,” he mutters, accidentally dropping the broken glass into his full washing up bowl and poking his finger trying to fish it out again. “ _Ow_ , fuck.”

“Shiro -” Hunk says and Shiro turns around impulsively into the friendly shelter of his big body. “Oh, man. Come here. Come on, sit down.”

He sits back down at the table, staring at the gleaming clean surface, and soothes Atlas’ worry. She never did understand human pain; Black had been much more accustomed to it, had known exactly what it meant for him to hurt and scream and die. How to save all of him she could get, mercilessly. Sometimes he wonders if she hadn’t missed a bit. 

Hunk sits down with him, sets a first aid kit down and takes his hand gently. “Think I’ll keep this one?” Shiro jokes. Hunk glances up at him and his eyes are so open and kind it makes Shiro shaky, somehow stopping him holding the line of retreat like he would’ve done just a couple of weeks ago: before Atlas had smashed back through his defences, before the image of Allura had started to shimmer before them like the haze over water in the desert, before he’d known the feeling of Keith moving gently inside him. “Curtis,” he blurts, and when Hunk looks at him quizzically the words tumble out of him like the thin trickle of blood not yet staunched. “He - asked me if I still wanted to be married. I didn’t say anything. The next day he told me he wanted a divorce.”

“Jeez,” Hunk says. He curls his fingers carefully around Shiro’s as he works, pressing an alcohol wipe over the small cut, drying it with gauze, rubbing some antiseptic cream in and smoothing a slim bandaid into place. Shiro can’t remember the last time somebody treated a hurt of his so gently, especially one so inconsequential.

The papers he’s received today are brief and to the point. Two signatures and a wet ink stamp from the Government of Terra and his marriage is over. There’d been a dismissive, crisply congratulatory covering note from Shiro’s lawyer; he somehow feels worse about that than anything, that they’d so obviously got the impression his divorce was welcome to him. 

Already his marriage feels like a diversion, forgotten in the rearview mirror as his journey continues on. He wonders about all the Shiros who didn’t meet Curtis, didn’t get together with him, didn’t marry him. It makes him feel terrible to realise that not much in his life would have been different if he hadn’t gotten married; somehow he’d never let the fact of it change his other choices much.

“All done,” Hunk says and Shiro flexes his hand, watching the tendons move under the bandaid.

“Thanks,” he says. “You didn’t have to.”

“It’s okay to let people take care of you,” Hunk says gently, “it’s okay to _want_ people to take care of you,” and when he pulls Shiro in Shiro lets himself go, presses his face into Hunk’s shoulder and breathes. 

***

Atlas lets Keith in without even checking in with Shiro; Keith’s look of surprise makes Shiro squirm, but he can’t bring himself to tell her off. He likes Keith coming in like he has a right to be here. 

“How was your swim?” he says.

“Fine,” Keith says. “Are you okay? Hunk said you hurt yourself.”

“Hardly,” Shiro says. He holds his hand up as proof and Keith grabs it and inspects the bandaid over the tiny injury. His touch is soft, anxious, and it makes Shiro ache to feel Keith’s hands on him again. The conversation with Hunk has left him raw.

“What happened?” Keith says strictly.

“I just broke a glass,” Shiro says. Keith blinks up at him, looking as pale and serious as when Shiro had woken up from being implanted into the body of a clone of himself and nearly dying, and the confessional mood is still on him: he doesn’t want to hide. Not from Keith. “It was an accident,” he adds. “My - the divorce papers came through. It’s all done.”

Keith looks at him for a steady moment and then looks down. He goes to drop Shiro’s hand and Shiro covers it, clasping Keith’s slender palm between both of his. “Oh,” Keith says softly, understanding spreading through his voice and body. “I’m sorry. I meant what I said, you know. I never wanted you to be unhappy.”

“It’s fine, Keith. I’m not in here mourning.” He’s just thinking; less about the past, even, than the future. Hunk’s question of what’s next for him - about change - has unsettled him. Part of what he’d liked about the Garrison was that the path of an astroexplorer had been so clear to him; there was no wondering, just eyes on the prize, a linear upward curve set against the uncertain but inevitable decline of his disease, ambition outracing his own body. War had been meandering but still obvious, righteously so. He’d settled back into the Coalition’s new military-diplomacy mission with something like relief, and his marriage had been part of that: the Commander and the up-and-coming officer, an IGF power couple, predictable and safe. Now it’s like Hunk has spread the universe out in front of him and it’s dizzying.

And, somehow, without Shiro quite noticing when or how, Keith at the centre; a sun to the possibilities circling Shiro’s mind, drawing some of them irresistibly to the fore.

He gives Keith a tentative, hopeful smile, but Keith is frowning, his forehead furrowing in lines Shiro’s never noticed before. “Right,” he mutters. “It’s easy for you to let things go.”

“What?” Shiro says, surprise chased fast by hurt. “Keith -”

Keith’s gaze slides away from him, hooded. Shiro wants to reach for him but Keith is standing tall and stiff-backed, as remote as if he were wearing the enclosing Blades mask.

“Sorry,” Keith says and Shiro has a confused moment of guilt and gladness that Keith has never been able to stay mad at him. Keith adds, “That wasn’t fair. It’s none of my business. I should go.”

“No, Keith -” Shiro says, then shakes his head, frustrated. This time he does put his hand out to Keith, impulsive, and the cold clench around his heart releases when Keith reaches back for him, skimming their fingers together without holding. Keith’s been the one to catch him so many times and Shiro lets himself be shameless in how much he shows that this is another time he can’t bear for Keith to let him fall. “Please don’t go like this. I thought… I hoped we were… that we had an understanding. That we were working towards something.”

“We are,” Keith says, immediately, insistently. Quick enough to reassure Shiro, but when he tries again to take Keith’s hand Keith folds his arms over his chest, the defensive posture Shiro had thought left behind with his teenagehood, and Shiro aches. He wants to be with Keith, but if all he can do is hurt him… perhaps he ought to be stepping back, instead, letting Keith come to him in his own time. He just can’t help feeling that if he does that now he might lose Keith completely, and more irrevocably with everything out in the open than when it had been wartime and misunderstandings and hurt feelings on both sides.

He hadn’t been able to find the words to make Curtis stay. With Keith it’s worth the effort. “Please talk to me,” he says quietly. “Tell me what I can do.”

“I don’t know,” Keith says, but he turns to face Shiro and he steps close enough Shiro can feel his presence electric. “I can’t…”

“Forgive?” Shiro says.

“Forget,” Keith says, his eyes closing, his voice raw. “You walking away from me was my biggest fear. I know you knew that… you saw it. I lost everything.”

“Oh, God, Keith,” Shiro says, and he doesn’t know whether he’s feeling his own misery or Keith’s. He’d never dreamt Keith would have felt his loss so strongly, not by then, years after that vision in the Blades trial. “You were doing so well. Leading Voltron, the Blades, you had your mom… I was so proud of you. I didn’t think… what could I give you anymore?”

“You still could have been my friend!” Keith says sharply.

“No,” Shiro says, “I couldn’t,” and he’s suddenly overwhelmed by the memory of that time, how he’d felt like one big mass of scar tissue, ceaselessly painful and raw inside but numb to sensation from the outside. Things had hit relentlessly: being back in the world, trying to integrate Black’s void and the clone’s memories and the body that didn’t feel like his; landing on an Earth subjugated and tortured by the Empire that had ruined Shiro first; how everyone had looked to him for authority and reassurance. He’d given everything he had to the effort and there hadn’t been anything left for a Keith he’d been convinced he didn’t have anything to offer, not now Keith was the brave, loved leader Shiro had always known he could be. 

He sits down on the couch, abruptly, feeling like his legs won’t hold him anymore, and buries his face in his hands, feeling the smoothness of his prosthetic and the deep resonant hum of the crystal inside it. It almost always feels like his but very occasionally it’s alien and he can hardly bear it; this is one of those times and he has to work not to flinch away from his own hand.

He feels fingers in his hair, tentative with realisation and love, and he tips forward without looking. Keith is there: he rests his head on Keith’s stomach and breathes him in as Keith strokes him. 

“I missed you,” Keith whispers. “I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.”

“Nothing,” Shiro says. He tilts his head up to look at Keith. Keith’s looking back down at him, his eyes big and deep, deep blue, and Shiro blinks as Keith rubs a tear off Shiro’s cheek with a gentle thumb. “It wasn’t you who was wrong. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t see this,” Keith says and Shiro closes his eyes and presses against Keith, trying to soothe the despair out of his voice. “I thought… once we got back to Earth, you seemed okay. I thought you were okay.”

“I’m good at seeming okay,” Shiro says, exhausted. Curtis had always thought so, because Shiro had never told him otherwise, never shared most of what had happened to him. For a while it had worked: made him feel normal, like it was in the past; but it was only hiding, waiting, like the blue lion before Keith had come to wake it up. 

“Yeah, I’m getting that now,” Keith says, his eyes warm with gentle regret, and then he’s crowding onto Shiro’s lap, putting his arms around Shiro, and Shiro huddles in and hangs on tight.

***

When Shiro heads to the ashkera class that night Pidge is already there, going through a series of flowing low to the ground forms with crisp, almost angry precision. 

“She’s good,” Keith says from behind him and Shiro breaks off his stretches to twist and say hello, an eager smile on his face beyond all conscious control. He searches Keith’s expression, looking for… he doesn’t even know what. Something hesitant or anxious or strictly professional, but Keith is watching him like he doesn’t want to look at anything else and it’s easy just to gaze at him, quiet and calm. 

Elehir claps her hands at the front of the room and everyone arranges themselves into loose rows. Elehir is watching Pidge with concern and there’s an inevitability to it when she announces, “We’ll concentrate on partnered poses this evening,” and moves immediately to claim Pidge as her partner. 

Keith turns to him and smiles. Shiro has to keep careful control of his breath: Keith is a devastating mix of tight leggings and loose vest revealing smooth bare skin. Shiro wants to bite his collarbones and it’s pretty hard not to.

“I’ve never done partnered work before. Will you show me?” Keith says, in guileless tones, but the glint in his eyes is knowing and hot. He’s looking at Shiro caressingly, so much Shiro can almost feel it.

“Sure,” Shiro says. Around them people are partnering up, chatting and laughing a little, getting into the intimate headspace required, clasping their hands together in the formal ask-and-answer of opening up an Ashkera partnership, for however long it lasts. Keith’s hand is gentle and strong in Shiro’s flesh hand as they come to facing one another; he holds a little more firmly in the prosthetic, Keith’s elegant, long fingers small against it. “It’ll be easier if you go on top,” he adds, letting his voice drip with insinuation. He’s ostensibly talking about the more challenging lifts they’ll come on to later, but Keith loses his own control just enough for a tiny hint of sharp fang inside the wet pink of his mouth as he licks his lips, tantalisingly close as Shiro bends just a little to press their foreheads together. Elehir starts a ringing ululation that somehow brings the scent of shimmering fresh greenery washing through the gymnasium. Atlas likes it; he can feel her contentment.

Even after years of practice it usually takes Shiro a few minutes to really be in his routine, feel totally in his body, but today he’s startlingly aware of every twitch of his muscle, every circulation of air through Atlas’ fans, every tender scrap of warmth from where Keith’s body is close to his. Keith looks calm, as remote as he ever felt from under a faceless Blades mask, but Shiro finds himself moving instinctively to correct for the fine tremble going through his partner as they move smoothly into the first pose, a simple joint balance that nevertheless takes perfect trust, their toes pressed together, hands still joined as they lean back, holding each other in poised counterweight for seven measured breaths.

His joke is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fluid motions that have never felt about anything but the pure sense of physicality, simple exercise, with other partners is a dance, performed with Keith; and unmistakably, almost unbearably sexual. He’s _living_ , everything bright and real and freeing. 

For not having done partnered work before Keith is good at it, his hands as confident on Shiro as when they’d been in bed together, his body winding around Shiro’s and Shiro flowing instinctively around his like they were made for each other. Shiro is half-hard and warm with arousal almost immediately and he knows Keith can feel it, feels Keith’s erection in turn; Shiro’s never asked but based on how partnered Ashkera doesn’t avoid contact between the legs the way a human artform would he thinks Olkari reproductive organs are elsewhere. For him it heightens everything: Keith’s body against his right there where he needs pressure and heat, feeling Keith wanting him back, trying to keep his breathing regular and his movements controlled so as not to betray them to those around them; a startling mix of torture and bliss. 

The toughest, most intimate sequence usually closes out the session and Shiro doesn’t know whether to long for it or regret it. It calls for him to go to his knees, first, and trying to move with precision and flow is difficult when Keith’s looking down at him dark-eyed, both of them alive to the insinuations of the pose. His hands wrap around Keith’s hips and unlike other partners Keith corrects easily for the size and feel of his prosthetic, shifting his weight smoothly as Shiro brings him carefully off his feet, tipping Keith over his head, concentrating on making strong perpendicular lines, grounding both of their weight through the floor; he can feel Atlas hum beneath them, responding to the energy they’re all using, the flow of quintessence between partners.

He’s supposed to keep his neck straight - the advanced skill is in understanding his partner’s movements from the shifting of weight, without needing visual - but he can’t resist glancing up. Keith isn’t supposed to be looking either, but he is, and when he catches Shiro’s eye he grins, with the same proud, mischievous glint of every time he’d flawlessly pulled off Shiro’s cliff dive.

Shiro almost squeaks when he starts to move, it’s supposed to be a static pose, but Keith is shifting in the cradle of Shiro’s hands, exploring extensions of each long limb, stretching and rocking as languid as if he were on the floor. 

He looks up at Keith again. His eyes are closed, now, and he’s smiling, softly, and with a pure sweet shock Shiro realises he feels safe. He trusts Shiro to have him, to hold him. And he’s right to; Shiro’s found the rhythm Keith is laying down for him, moving where Keith needs him to be, and contrary to everything sensible it’s easier when he closes his eyes too and just _feels_ , their bodies working together.

Elehir claps again for the end of class, more muted. Shiro knows they won’t be the only ones locked in a spell made for two, so he feels no compunctions at all about lowering Keith straight into his arms, feeling the pleasant burn in his bicep, Keith’s arms and legs coming around him tightly; they’ve had sex without getting so close and Shiro buries his face in Keith’s neck, tangles his human hand in the hair falling out of Keith’s messy bun, lets himself soak in the warm animal comfort of being wrapped around someone he loves.

He could have stayed there much longer, but he’s aware of everyone else getting up, low murmuring of people congratulating each other on the good class, going back to their evenings, and Shiro should too; he’d promised Coran they’d have dinner together, before he’d realised this class would turn out anything but ordinary.

“I’m gonna check on Pidge,” he murmurs into the smooth, sweat-damp skin of Keith’s throat. Keith makes a low sound, almost a whine of dissatisfaction, but then he’s pulling back out of Shiro’s arms. He looks calm and rumpled as he crouches in front of Shiro, content, and Shiro can’t take such a complete loss of contact quite so quickly; he reaches out and tucks hair behind his ear, letting his thumb linger on the delicate lobe.

“Thanks for being my first time,” Keith says, his smile shading into something teasing, and Shiro bites his lip on a laugh.

“You’re welcome,” he says and stays kneeling, his hands on his thighs, as Keith gets up and leaves.

***

Pidge says she’s fine, in the irritable way that means she doesn’t need big-brothering, and Shiro waves her off out, hopefully not just straight back to her lab given she’s looking brighter-eyed than he’s seen her for days. He exchanges a few words with Elehir, giving his usual thanks for her sharing her talents with the crew. Finally he’s alone and he takes a moment to reach back into himself, find his bond with Atlas there.

She warns him, so he’s prepared for the ambush when he steps out of the gym.

Keith pushes him straight back into the room, and the way they crash together belies the steadiness of the practice they’ve just finished. Keith’s mouth on his is demanding, his hands back on Shiro without any of the control of before, mapping out the sweat-marked tautness of his muscles with ardent hunger, and even though Shiro knows it’s not smart he sinks into it for a forbidden, blissful minute, letting his hands explore Keith in return the way he’d been desperately wanting to the whole of the last hour, the way he’s been wanting to since the last time they were together. Kissing him again feels like touching the sky and they lose themselves, find each other in a turbulence of making out, as sloppy and enthusiastic as teenagers finding an after-curfew stolen moment before they’re called home.

“We’re not supposed to,” he mumbles, as soon as he can bear to pull away from Keith for a moment, his whole body hot with the need to stay close. Keith is so hard, rubbing up against him like he can’t help it, and Shiro’s reminder trails into a low groan as Keith cups his head, pulls his hair to get Shiro to bare his throat for Keith to lick and kiss his way down it, leaving a hard bite on the jut of Shiro’s collarbone bared by his workout tank. Shiro could go to his knees right here, taste Keith again, make him come. 

“I know, I know,” Keith says. Shiro can feel his hand between them, groping himself shamelessly, his knuckles brushing Shiro’s aching dick. “I know, but you’re so - God, I just want to -”

He buries his head in Shiro’s throat and yells and Shiro strokes his back, his stomach churning with desire and shame. So much of him wants to give in to this and he tips Keith’s face up to his, searches the violet storms in his eyes, leans in to find his lips again for a tender, close-mouthed kiss. 

They’d agreed to be slow with each other, he’d agreed to give Keith time; he doesn’t want to sacrifice that for a quick fuck with nothing resolved between them, to the emptiness that would be giving in to the physical bond between them before Keith is ready to make emotional promises too. He doesn’t want more sex where Keith doesn’t stay in his arms afterwards. 

Keith sighs and presses their foreheads together. His hands are still, now, pressed to the small of Shiro’s back, under his shirt. It’s so nearly what Shiro wants. 

“I love you,” he says, kisses Keith’s forehead, and pulls away. 

***

“We need to wormhole to another sector,” Pidge says flatly, at breakfast the next day with two datapads and a laptop taking up half the table, and a holographic display taking up all the space over it.

“Fine?” Shiro says, sucking space honey off of his spoon. Keith is tinted an eerie blue by the swirling galaxy projection between them but Shiro is pretty sure he’s watching. 

“ _Now_ ,” she says snappishly.

“Wow, okay,” he says, cowed into obedience by the way she’s stabbing at the laptop keys - yesterday’s class obviously hasn’t left her as relaxed as it had Shiro - and Hunk refills his bowl on the way out so he can take it with him.

***

The alert goes off about thirty seconds after the wormhole jump. “Yes!” Pidge crows, suddenly on fire again, and the four of them are racing off down to the lions.

“Shiro,” Veronica says and Shiro steps forward to lean over the screen she’s unobtrusively shielding from the rest of the bridge.

“Is that -” he says and she nods, tracing the shapes on the screen loosely, her fingertips just brushing the screen.

“I’ve never _seen_ quintessence in space before,” she says, half-wondrous half-worried. “Atlas’ instruments have never been this sensitive. Even when Honerva was cracking open the realities…”

“It’s not her instruments,” he says. He has seen quintessence before: he remembers it well, from when Atlas had transformed the very first time, how everything around him had disappeared in the energy rush of the ship waking up to what she was for, whispering to him how to help. “It’s the strength of it.”

“You think this is the place?” Veronica whispers and the way she looks up at him as he straightens up slowly is almost afraid.

“Maybe,” he says. He goes back to his post and opens a private channel to the black lion. “Keith?” he says softly. 

“Yeah,” Keith says, a beat too late; he sounds fuzzy, not at all like his usual self while piloting, and Shiro frowns. 

“Are you okay?” He can’t stop his voice being tender, even intimate: he’s lost the knack, since the war ended, of being comfortable with people he loves being in danger. This mix of anxious affection and protectiveness is familiar but new again, and it’s not very enjoyable. 

“Yeah,” Keith says. “There’s just - _fuck_ , I don’t know. There’s a pressure, my head - like something trying to come through -“

Shiro glances at his screens, mirroring what Veronica had seen, the visible waves of quintessence energy. “We’re getting a massive quintessence surge,” he says. “Keith… does it feel like Allura? Does it feel friendly towards us?”

“Don’t know,” Keith says. There’s a crunching sound and when he next speaks he sounds more alert: stimulants. “It just feels _strong_.”

Shiro bites his tongue. He’d like to call them in, but that’s driven more by not liking this effect on Keith, hearing him stressed and maybe in pain, than it is a real assessment of risk.

“Okay,” he says. “Let me know if _anything_ changes, okay? I don’t like you guys being exposed out there.”

Atlas flickers in his mind and he agrees with her assessment: she can feel something going on and she’s eager to be ready to help the lions if it becomes necessary. He switches to ship-wide comms and orders the crew to prepare for full transformation.

He can feel the quintessence himself, as soon as she starts to gather power from the Castle crystal to change. Keith’s right: there’s something behind it, something driving it, trying to break through. It doesn’t feel malevolent, but it does feel powerful, and _alien_ , and Shiro reminds himself of the many civilisations he’s visited by now which had good reasons for behaving in ways humans found almost impossible to understand, even knowing the vast, rich spectrum of their own cultures. 

He has to hide his thoughts from Atlas, who feels young and afraid, trying to reach tendrils into his mind for comfort; he gives it readily, soothing her, urging her to be brave. Her transformation is eager, faster than she’s ever managed it before, and he steadies himself against the exhilarating surge of power as he feels it through her senses.

She wants him beside her in the ethereal quintessence-soaked space of their bond once she’s transformed so he lingers. The lions are drifting, not like the regimented search patterns of the early days of their mission; but when he’s with Atlas he can see the purposefulness of their flight, how they’re following lines of energy invisible to any of their instruments. He can feel them and it startles him to come up against the familiar forcefulness of Black, exerting herself on the other lions, leading them, Blue pilotless at her side and guiding the group. He’s terrified for a moment, thrown inexorably back into the loneliness and fear of being in her infinite void, forgetting how to live, forgetting how to hope for surcease, raging against the imposter in her cockpit even while he was devoutly grateful that with the clone piloting it wasn’t Keith, that she could never _save_ him the way she had Shiro and throw them into shared purgatory. It won’t happen again: he knows Allura took that from Black when she’d pulled him out to restore him to a physical body, and he never allows himself that deep of a connection with Atlas.

“Keith, how are you guys doing?” he says quietly.

“Fine,” Keith says briefly, in a clearly not-fine way. “You’re ready to fight.”

“We’re ready to help you,” Shiro says. He smiles at Veronica and Coran and they glance at each other and swing their chairs back around to their stations. The line of Coran’s back is stiff and unhappy. He lowers his voice and adds, “Whatever it takes, Keith. We’re here. I’m - I’m with you.”

Keith sighs over the connection between them and Shiro closes his eyes, straining to hear more. Keith sounds exhausted and he’s aching to protect him, to give Keith whatever he needs. 

“I don’t think…” Keith says, fading, and then the line crackles with a switch to the paladin open channel.

“It’s gone,” Pidge says, vividly frustrated. “Everyone in.”

***

Pidge and Hunk are bent over a datapad and barely glance up at Shiro as he hurries through the massive transport hangars of the Atlas.

“... closer than ever…” he hears Hunk say, plaintive, which gets some snarling response from Pidge, and then Kosmo flashes in front of him, so close he nearly trips, gives Shiro a superior look, and crowds into Shiro to teleport them both.

He’s in Black’s hangar just in time to catch Keith as he stumbles out of her jaw, steadying himself against Kosmo’s bulk. Keith is heavy in his arms, almost limp; when Shiro pulls him in, feeling protective and almost angry, he goes uncomplainingly, even leans hard into Shiro’s chest and tucks his head under Shiro’s chin. 

“I’m okay,” he says when Shiro pulls away enough to cup his face and tilt him up, examining him, but he’s horribly pale and the smile he tries to give fractures after barely a second into nauseated exhaustion. Shiro knows very, very well how much pain Keith can tolerate: for him to be showing this means what he’s dealing with would have anyone else screaming on the floor. 

“You’re not,” Shiro says flatly, and Keith doesn’t fight when Shiro settles him into Shiro’s side with an arm securely around his waist and starts to guide him out of the hangar, just leans into him with a tiny sigh. Shiro would carry him if he thought Keith would allow it, but he’s pretty sure Keith would have to be unconscious for that to happen. 

“Keith? Are you okay, buddy?” Hunk says, looking up at them with concern as they come out into the hold. 

Pidge tears herself away from her screens a second later and gives Keith a narrow, considering look. “Pure quintessence,” she says to Hunk and waves a hand at Keith like he’s one of her robots. “Next time it’ll be a rift. We’re nearly there, I’m sure of it.” Keith just blinks at her hazily, wincing away from their voices. It makes Shiro want to hide him away, hold him gently and make sure he’s okay, and he presses Keith a little closer into his side, not even air between them. 

“We’ll talk about it later,” he says. Kosmo comes up behind him, winds himself around Shiro and Keith, and Shiro can’t distinguish between the rush of that, Keith’s companion treating them as a unit, and the cold flash of the void as Kosmo carries them away to Keith’s room. 

Keith flops down onto the bed immediately, as if his legs won’t hold him up anymore. Kosmo noses at the soles of his boots and gives Shiro a meaningful look and Shiro takes a deep breath and comes to help Keith undress. 

It’s not sexy. Keith is grumpy, has to be coaxed into stripping down like a grubby child who doesn’t want a bath, but he reacts so easily to Shiro touching him. Keith leans on him shamelessly as he picks the armour off Keith’s body and strips the undersuit down his slender body and long legs, and Shiro is almost shaking himself with tenderness by the time he has Keith loose and mostly naked in his arms.

Keith lets himself be spilled into bed and it’s almost impossible not to crawl in with him, not because of a compulsion towards sex but because it feels unthinkable to leave Keith alone when he’s vulnerable like this, even with Atlas assuring Shiro she can keep an eye on his room. Shiro smooths the covers over him, pulls them up to his chin and makes sure Keith is covered and comfortable and warm; and then he does give in and indulge himself, sits on the side of the bed and drops his head into his hands, just for a moment. He needs to go and find out what Pidge and Hunk are thinking; he should check in with the crew and settle Atlas back out of her mech form, jumpy with having changed into her battle state and yet nothing having shown up for her to hit; reassure Lance and comfort Coran. This mission is turning into long stretches of nothing with brief bursts of frantic activity: after years of diplomacy, it’s disquieting to be back in a rhythm he associates inexorably with war.

He can’t hide in the peace of Keith’s room and presence and long quiet breaths forever. He sighs and tenses, preparing to get up, and Keith says, “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“Of course,” Shiro says automatically, a splitsecond before the request hits his conscious brain, bringing a warm wash of happiness with it. 

Keith works one hand out of the swaddle of his sheets and Shiro covers it with his immediately, twining their fingers on the pillow. Keith glances up at him and closes his eyes and Shiro strokes his hair with his other hand, watching the line of Keith’s body relax under the covers. He has to lean to the side to do it, a little uncomfortably, but it’s small enough trade for Keith wanting him here; for Keith trusting him.

***

Judging by the targets, Lance has been on the shooting range for a while. His bayard’s form has changed slightly, Shiro notes clinically: it resembles less the high-tech energy weapons used by the Galra, the way it used to, and looks more like the kind of long-barrelled rifle that might be used on a farm, albeit with the peculiar chemical smell Shiro associates with Altean weapons. He waits at the door until Lance has finished a lengthy burst, his hands steady even while his expression betrays a mix of frustration and misery.

“Hi,” he says when Lance is done, the bayard drooping at his side. He’s breathing hard and he doesn’t bother to pull up the target and examine his aim. Shiro can see even from this distance that it’s perfect: despite the number of times he’d shot just while Shiro was standing here, he’s so accurate it looks as if it could have been only three or four triggerpoints, the energy beam powering through the burnt-edge hole left by the earliest shots right in the centre of the paper target. 

Lance glances over at him and Shiro’s concern rises at the blank look in his eyes before he blinks and smiles, looking almost like his old self. Lance is the same age as Hunk, older than Pidge and just a year younger than Keith, at least before the quantum abyss, but somehow he’d always felt like the youngest of them to Shiro, more erratic than Hunk’s kind steadiness and without the flinty single-mindedness of Pidge’s search for her family. He’d grown and calmed a lot over his time as a paladin, and Shiro had been astonished and proud of how he’d dealt with his grief over Allura by trying to turn it into something good for the universe, but the shadow of that jokey teenager had never quite left the Lance of Shiro’s mind’s eye and it’s a shock anew to look at Lance properly, in the dim light of the shooting range, and see that he’s visibly a mature young man now, about the same age Shiro had been when the war ended.

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” Lance says, and Shiro takes the unspoken challenge, Lance moving the subject onto things that are painful for Shiro before Shiro can bring up the things that are painful for him.

“I’m here twice a week,” he says, and makes a small show of going to the datapad embedded into the wall. He doesn’t have to use the biometric iris scan, which is a little bit of an abuse of the power of his link with Atlas, but when he signs in his history scrolls down onto the screen and he can feel Lance over his shoulder, looking at it.

“Twice a week?” Lance says, and Shiro controls himself not to flinch when Lance takes his arm in both hands, gentle but firm, slides open the compartment for the power source. Shiro wouldn’t allow anyone else to do that, not even Keith - not yet - but Allura’s crystal hums when Lance touches it, a fond warmth spreading around Shiro’s shoulder and the Altean marks under Lance’s eyes glowing white, and he’s good with giving Lance the right.

Lance lets him go. “Arm stopped working?” he says, faintly accusing, and Shiro steps back from him and turns to the handgun the Atlas has presented to him from the racks, picking it up and starting to deliberately chamber a set of blanks.

“I stopped using it that way,” he says. “After the battle for Earth, after Sendak. Allura knew. She understood. A lethal weapon I could never lay down… that was what Haggar gave me. It wasn’t what Allura wanted from her creation or her ancestors’ crystal, either.”

It had been a big decision, a hard decision, although the capability is still there; he might have tried to change that, fix the forearm in place and remove its offensive capabilities altogether, but only Allura could and by the time the war was over and he’d felt it wouldn’t be abandoning his responsibilities to do so, she’d been dead; he thinks of it as a tribute to her to keep it now, in some ways. He’s been trying not to prematurely investigate his own feelings about what that might mean for when she comes back. He can’t regret his hand-to-hand combat abilities, not when they’d kept him alive in the arena, kept others alive in skirmishes with the Galra afterwards, but it had hurt him deeply every time he’d used it; not just physically - not even physically, once he’d had the combination of the Earth-built Altean-powered arm - but in the ragged, pained, peaceful depths of his soul.

The arm wrestling is as much as he does these days, a reminder that the killing force of his arm is _his_. Not Zarkon’s, not Haggar’s, not even Sam’s or Allura’s despite their good intentions; he can turn it to whatever silly purposes he wants.

“I never thought about it like that,” Lance says and when Shiro turns back to the room his expression is alive and soft. Shiro follows his look down to the gun in his hands and as they both watch it changes back into the familiar curving shape of the bayard. A tool, a key, a link to the lions, and Lance sighs and sets it down carefully on one of the ammunition chests.

Shiro picks out a pair of ear protectors and gestures Lance to them too, checking he’s put some on before he steps up to the range. His target practice is careful but routine: five sets of six, at three different distances, and then the last two rounds with the AI fielding moving targets. The range systems come back with his results, a little below par but well within usual performance parameters.

“You’re good,” Lance says, when Shiro takes off his ear protectors, still lounging at the back of the room, and Shiro accepts it as the feedback of one professional to another.

“I started off in here once a day,” he says. “I learnt.”

Lance holds out his bayard, transformed again back to the gun. “You want to try?”

It’s one of Lance’s unexpected kindnesses and it makes Shiro freeze. He’d wielded the black bayard for bare hours, not even enough time to wonder what weapon it would have transformed into for him. For a moment the memory of the power of it makes his flesh hand clench; more than that, the vivid exultation of the bond with his lion, feeling the deepest connection possible with Black.

It’s the past. “No, thanks,” he says, coming to lean against the wall next to Lance, betting he doesn’t have to say much more than that; Lance is still a chatterer.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Lance says, worrying his lip. “Getting my hopes up every time. What if we don’t find her?”

Shiro says, “It’s still only been a couple of weeks. It’s a big universe. We’ll find her.”

Lance rubs his face and Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder, shakes him a little, comforting, waiting. “I spent so long imagining one day she’d just magically come home,” Lance says, after a while. “At first. And then I just… I have a good life, you know? Comfortable. I have my family and our farm. I stopped obsessing over it.”

“You stopped feeling,” Shiro guesses. 

“It was easier not to,” Lance says. “God, and now… I don’t want to wait another minute for what we could have, you know? I gave up on that stuff! I was _fine_ , I had my brothers and sisters and the kids, what else did I need? My mom’s tried to set me up with every woman in Cuba under forty, Veronica’s tried to get me to date half your crew…”

“Mmm,” Shiro says, imagining that much too well.

“I still don’t even really understand what happened to her,” Lance says, “I don’t know if we’ll find her, or how she’ll be, or if she’ll still -” and he’s crying now, and at least Shiro still knows what to do with that. He pulls Lance in, the crystal in his arm resonating soft against the shuddering rhythm of Lance’s breaths. Lance covers his face, his fingertips resting on the marks Allura left, and weeps.

***

They pass within a light year of an unknown planet the next day, and Atlas surprises him with a survey: uninhabited by sentient life, nontoxic to all of the species onboard, beautiful.

“You want a break?” he asks her, grinning, and the bridge is used enough to it at this point that nobody gives him looks for talking to himself.

She’s a bit indignant about it. She’s perfectly well, he gets, but yes, her crew needs a rest, and he’s charmed enough by her earnest caretaking to call the detour.

It’s a good day, a gentle day. Atlas had seen something he hadn’t, preoccupied as he’s been with the paladins, charitably, and Keith, honestly: how much his crew have been affected by the excitement and uncertainty of their task. He can feel the tension fall away as they enjoy a warm day on an expansive alien beach, an indigo sea lapping gently at pale-gold sand.

Atlas wants him to relax too, reassures him that she’s got this. Even in mech form she’s as comfortable planetside as in space: albeit she’s even less maneuverable in planetary gravity, but there’s a stately elegance to her slow marching watch over her frolicking residents, once he’s asked her to move so she’s not blocking out the suns.

His crew are nothing if not resourceful, and it’s not long before nets are mounted and balls produced for volleyball. He watches the first few matches of the tournament, ignoring the obscenities - his crew are also nothing if not competitive - cheering everyone without favour, although it’s pretty difficult when the paladins scramble into contention.

They seem to have teamed up automatically and it’s lovely to see. Hunk nods at Shiro encouragingly as Lance, Keith, and Griffin confer fiercely over rules from opposite sides of the net, gesturing him to join them, and Shiro waves him off. He appreciates the offer, but he wants to be flawlessly above internal squabbles, and anyway it’s pleasant to watch, lying comfortably on a blanket, a bonfire throwing crackles and smoke-scent down the beach, the sand beneath obliging with a firm but yielding surface the most expensive mattress-makers on Earth would be jealous of.

Keith is stunning, of course, in Atlas-logoed baggy shorts and tank that in their casual soft drape somehow flaunt his body even more than the close-fitting Blades outfit, sexy by suggestion rather than by scandalousness. Keith is as furious in victory as he is in loss, the latter coming rarely with how smoothly the paladins work together, as in sync at the net as they ever were in battle.

Shiro doesn’t realise he’d slipped into sleep until he awakens to a spray of cool water over his bare chest: Keith standing above him and squeezing out his braid, his eyes purple in the twilight, damp and laughing.

“How’s the water?” Shiro says muzzily, squinting up at him. 

“Water’s fine,” Keith says. He pulls up the hem of his tank top to wring it out and Shiro’s gaze catches on the taut muscle revealed. He wants to lick the drops rolling down Keith’s perfect stomach, wants to follow the trail of hair there, down to where Shiro can see Keith’s cock starting to fatten under his attention.

He’s having a similar problem. He sits up slowly, brings his knees up and drapes his arms over them to hide the erection growing even more as he comes pretty much mouth-level with Keith’s dick, watching Keith’s expression lapse into ready desire before he controls himself. If they were alone - if only they were alone, even with things so uncertain between them, it would be impossible not to lean in, sloppily mouth what Keith’s packing for him, pull Keith’s swim shorts down and worship his body. Shiro is sun-warmed and loose and lazy, his body thrumming with easy physicality: getting fucked would be a great way to end a good day, and he wants it desperately.

Keith licks his lips, watching him; too dangerous, and Shiro stands up. A cookout’s been started down the beach and the smell of roasting meat is drifting towards them, delicious on the subtle herbal scent of this planet’s sea air. “You hungry?” he says.

Keith’s gaze drops brazenly to his mouth, saying clearly what he’s hungry for, and Shiro shivers. His nipples are hard and sensitive against the brushed cotton of his sleeveless top. Forget being fucked, just being kissed would be enough, feeling like there’s company for him in this, hope. 

He closes his eyes, tries to get himself together, jerks with surprise at Keith’s lips glancing off his, nervy and off-centre. He sighs helplessly, embarrassed and turned on and grateful, and then Keith’s hand is on his hip, softly, and Shiro responds in kind when Keith brushes their mouths together. It’s a reassuring kiss, quick and homely, and Shiro lingers over it after Keith’s pulled away, luxuriating in the echo of seawater on his lips. 

Somewhere in the distance Lance’s voice is raised in outrage, Pidge’s laugh following, Hunk’s rising over both of them with some instruction about the barbecue. 

“Come on,” Keith says, and Shiro follows him to join their friends and his crew around the bonfire. 

***

Atlas wakes Shiro by what feels like stinging his brain with a thousand bees and he’s still biting down his yell when the alert starts going off, somehow sounding more hurried and strident than before. 

“What?” he says out loud, crashing out of bed and starting to hurry into the nearest clothes, uniform pants and the sandy top from the beach. “Wake the bridge and prepare to -“

She’s already transforming, joined anxiously close to him so it feels like an electric shock running through every nerve and limb as she shifts and stretches into her robot form sharper and more precise than she’s managed before. He tries to soothe her even as he’s out the door and sprinting along the corridors, her change altering on the fly to give him a clear run. 

She’s changed her configuration enough to let the lions out even while she’s transforming, and he’d admire it more if he wasn’t flooded with anxiousness, not sure whether it’s hers or his own, at arriving onto the bridge and seeing them flying a soaring, swirling frenzy up ahead, moving so fast it looks random: he recognises the pattern somewhere in the thumping pulse through his arteries and veins; he thinks he saw it in the purple beyond of Black’s mind.

“The lions are talking to me!” Lance yells and before Shiro can blink he sees the lions start to arc together, their flightpaths forming into the familiar arrow, perfectly in formation, of readiness to integrate.

“ _Lions_?” Pidge calls, her lean on the collective hard even over the comms, and Shiro’s breath catches even as he feels Atlas’ confirmation.

“What’s going on?” Veronica says, hurrying into her seat, leaning forward intent on her brother as if she can reach him through the viewscreen.

“The blue and red lions are both talking to Lance,” Shiro says slowly. “They’re… they’re ready to form Voltron.”

Keith hasn’t had to say it. The lions are merging in front of them, familiar, much-missed: Blue and Yellow already bulky long legs, Red and Green becoming the arms, Black’s wings flaring out with the feathered stretch of her deepest powers.

“They never made Voltron with only four paladins,” Veronica snaps, and he can hear under her voice that she’s afraid.

“It means there’s five,” Coran says behind them, his usual cheerful practicality wiped out by shock and hope, “Blue’s paladin is here.”

He sways and Shiro is glad for the distraction of taking care of him: hurrying to his side, taking his slender weight, almost carrying him to his station and crouching next to him, Veronica next to them with her attention torn between Coran and her screen and Voltron, hanging in space before them as if it hasn’t been absent for years. 

The face is the same as ever, mechanical and impassive, and Shiro suppresses a shiver. He doesn’t know whether it’s because Atlas is of human make, even with her Altean technology, or whether it’s because of the realities-crossing comet that made Voltron, but it never felt like it had the personality the lions do or Atlas does: he can feel her now, curious and excited, hear the paladins whooping with the energy and joy transmitting to them from their lions, but Voltron is solid, unsentimental, unequivocally alien.

“Where?” Veronica says. “What’s Voltron _doing_? Is Allura there? Is Lance okay?” 

Others are joining them, the bridge filling up with half-awake and anxious crew, taking their seats, looking at the screens reeling off impossible information.

This is where Shiro is supposed to make a speech. He’d had that skill once, been able to make people follow him, had the trick of inspiring and reassuring them. He can’t bring any of those clever words to mind now, too slow to overcome the last five years of empty feeling and a numb tongue. 

He tries to find something, anything, and then the Voltron comms come back to ship-wide life. Pidge shouts, “Quintessence surging!” at the same time Veronica exclaims, “These readings, they can’t -” 

\- and a massive rift splits open the black space behind Voltron. Pure white energy crackles out of it, quintessence reaching for them with lightning strike ferocity, pouring out into their reality -

\- people are screaming and Shiro wants to help, wants to take command, but Atlas is aching in him, Voltron filling the viewscreen as it turns to look at them, the quintessence carrying them close and then surrounding them, smashing through them, merciless. He’s vaguely aware of being on his knees, gasping -

\- they’re one, again, Voltron and Atlas merging, one perfect being, channeling so much power the only way they know without being destroyed -

\- they’re five, together, open, feeling the cruel gap of Allura shimmering with anticipation in the paladin bond bridging them, around the sharing of Hunk’s endless kindness, Pidge’s deep curiosity, Lance’s innate bravery, Keith’s undying loyalty, and Shiro hasn’t felt anyone so closely for years, so afraid of being known -

\- and Keith loves him. 

More than he could ever have believed without feeling it, more than he deserves, steadfast and generous, a kind of grace, and Shiro grits his teeth and forces himself up, soothes the clinging confusion of Voltron-Atlas, lowers the sword in their hand, even as a shining white lion leaps out of the rift and roars.

_Do we fight?_ Hunk says in their minds.

“No,” Shiro says out loud, softly, staring out of the viewscreen. The lion is a thing of terror and wonder, encompassing worlds and barely real, the quintessence forming its body already fading outside its own fantastical realm. He hadn’t realised he’d known it, the alchemical parent that had lived somewhere in the depths of Black’s soul: he hadn’t realised how much it would mean to him, to know the guardian had survived Haggar’s attempt at murder. “We wait.”

It shakes its head at them, regal and somehow loving, like they’re silly children. It’s shimmering out into dust, becoming one with the universe once more, the quintessence that gives it form in their reality collapsing. The rift behind it blazes out one last time, blue-white and hot, indescribably powerful, and Voltron-Atlas turns to face it, their five minds holding strong, protecting the living beings within them until it passes. 

Shiro doesn’t know where he is for a scared moment: he’s everywhere, everything, all of them and none of them.

Voltron-Atlas falls apart.

“Shiro?” he hears.

“It’s okay,” he manages, and blacks out.

***

Atlas wakes him, insistent and afraid. “Wha’?” he says, fuzzy and head aching, his being still grappling with the discoveries of being melded to the paladins, but the light of the quintessence surge has barely faded: he can’t have been out more than a few seconds. 

“Can you get up?” Veronica says, just before she more or less hauls him up whether he can or not.

“Shiro,” Coran says, his voice torn between anguish and hope: he reaches back for Shiro when Shiro goes only half-intentionally to lean on him, but all his attention is on the yearning stretch of his hand outwards.

Beyond the viewscreen, to reeling space as Atlas rights herself, the lions correcting sluggishly out of the spins they’ve been thrown out of as Voltron disintegrated into parts.

All but one. The blue lion is flying, straight and true, and as the fading jaws of the white lion open Blue is ready to snatch up the tiny curled figure floating there alone and impossible.

“Bring them in,” Shiro forces out, backs it with a gentle command to his ship. “Atlas - bring them home. Bring them _all_ home.”

***

Atlas is obedient. By the time he and Coran get down to the lions’ hangar, they’re all there. Allura is in Lance’s arms, the two of them a crying laughing sprawl on the floor.

Shiro finds he can stand on his own; has to, anyway, Coran sprinting for his princess and joining the joyful pile. Shiro can barely think, barely even feel, the last few minutes too much, too good; he just watches them through a film of tears, unashamed about letting them drip down his cheeks, a wash of peace through body and soul.

Hunk and Pidge are embracing on the other side, Pidge visibly shaking with happiness, waiting for their turn to throw themselves on their friends. He doesn’t see Keith at first, and then he’s there, at Shiro’s side, the only thing that could tear Shiro’s attention from the reunion in front of him. Keith smiles at him, crying as freely as the rest of them, slips his hand into Shiro’s and squeezes; they stand together.

***

He finds her gazing up at her statue, and when he gets close her expression is as narrow as he’d always thought it would be. He smiles himself at the sight of it - at the sight of her - just as he’d imagined, never thought he’d get to see. Allura turns to him as he comes close, stretches out her hands to him, and he comes close to take them, leaning in to kiss her smooth warm cheek.

“I don’t _really_ look like that, I hope,” she says.

“Think of the affection behind it,” he advises, thinking ruefully of the kind, somewhat lumpen statue of himself in the shrine district of the town where his grandparents had been born. “Rather than the, uh… artistic achievement.”

Her answering grin is mischievous but soft. He offers his arm impulsively and she tucks her hand into his elbow, looking gently charmed, and wanders with him down the hill. They’ve been gone only a few weeks in New Altea time, but spring has come while they were away and blossoms fall around them on an idle breeze.

“How does it feel? Being back home,” he says, careful to make it open for her to interpret as she wishes. He’s had enough well-meaning people stare into his eyes and intone _but how are you really_ to not want to inflict that on anyone else. He’s fully prepared for a rhapsody on juniberries. 

As ever, she’s every bit the warrior princess, not shying away from the more difficult choice. “As if I’d never left,” she says. “And yet. _Not_ as if I was never gone, or not as if Altea never was. Isn’t that odd?”

He shrugs. “Nothing about this isn’t odd.”

She laughs and pats his hand. “That’s very true. The memories of the rift, of the work we were doing to mend the realities… they’re fading very quickly. I don’t even recall how I came to return. Even less could I have imagined… all _this_ would be waiting for me.”

They stop on the terrace, leaning over the low barrier, pots hanging just beneath full of spring blooms that release their sweet scent as they brush against them. She gestures over the valley below, the view expansive and beautiful, rolling with grass and flowers up to the clear blue horizon.

“Is it the Altea you remember?” he asks.

“In many ways,” she says. “I do remember how Honerva and I remade Altea and Daizabaal, like a last wish granted before we gave ourselves up to the work, half memory, half our hopes and dreams. And of course Coran has done the rest.”

“He’ll be glad to hand it over,” Shiro says, but it’s not taken in the reassuring way he meant. Her smile wobbles and she turns away from him for a moment, the dropping sun blazing light on her silver hair.

“I must allow him, I know,” she says, a weight suddenly on her. “He’s done so much for my family, for me… he deserves his retirement.”

“But?” Shiro prompts softly and she shakes her head a little, pointing down the slope of the hill to her statue.

“The new Altea remembers its queen, but does it need her? New Altea doesn’t need a warrior leader, not with the Coalition protecting us against war. It doesn’t need an alchemist, now that the lions can no longer form Voltron. The Alteans of Lotor’s colony have had quite enough of somebody dropping into their lives occasionally to tell them what to do. Coran has built a good system here. The people have a choice who to look to.”

“And you can have a choice of your own,” he ventures, trying to give her as much understanding as he can. She deserves the space to figure out what she’s really feeling, what she really wants.

“I can’t help but want to find my own path. I want to _live_ , a life of my own choosing.”

“God knows you’ve earned that,” Shiro says vehemently. She gives him a small smile, accepting of his view even if not quite agreeing yet, and they stand together peacefully. After a moment Allura turns back to look down towards the palace, the people moving in and around it, bustling and busy but with clear purpose as they prepare for the night’s party. It’s calming to Shiro but he glances sideways to her and he can see troubledness on her brow, watching things carry on around her, perfectly organised for her, her people thriving.

The Alteans might have found a way to carry on with their queen a statue instead of a living breathing woman, but he knows someone who prizes her for her. He nudges her shoulder gently and says, “Where’s Lance this afternoon?”

She gives him a sharp glance, turning thoughtful when he gazes back at her, letting it all be in his eyes, his understanding of how it feels to come back to a world that’s gone on without you, apart from the one person who never stopped hoping. She puts her hand to her chest, blinking, and takes a deep breath. She’s wearing a ring of sorts, a daisy chain wrapped around her slender fingers; a tender, clumsy thing that makes his heart swell for them both. With a pink stain on her cheeks she says, “He’s settling his family into their suite before the party this evening. As are Hunk and Pidge.”

“Oh,” he says. She’s turned it round nearly onto him and he gives her a respectful nod at it, rueful; the paladin she hasn’t named looms large between them but she’s smiling so kindly, all the knowledge of infinite universes in her gaze, and Shiro can’t look at her.

“Everyone is spending some time with the people they love,” she adds. “It’s going to be a busy night.”

He covers her hand on his arm with his Altean hand, squeezes her fingers, her smile turning reminiscent at the subtle charge of the crystal inside. “Then you should go to him. I’ll see you later.”

***

Shiro takes a hoverbike again to the place by the stream where he and Keith had first come together, and it’s clear from afar that he’s going in the right direction; Keith has hopped the short distance in the black lion and she’s lazy as a real cat soaking up the last heat of the sun as it starts to drop past the horizon, filling the sky with shades of fire.

“Hey,” Shiro calls up to him. Kosmo lifts his head to give Shiro a panting welcome, Keith just waving him up without rising, but once Shiro has scrambled up to Black’s head and is standing over him he can see that Keith’s smiling, letting Shiro see his pleasure that Shiro came to find him. Kosmo has blinked away while Shiro was coming up to join them; it’s hard not to take that as a sign to hope.

“Looking forward to the party?” Shiro says. He sits down, draping his forearms on his knees and staring out over the sunset, even though he can feel Keith looking at him and knows Keith is more beautiful than anything even New Altea has to offer.

Keith just makes a vague noise, busy; Shiro closes his eyes and closes his arms around Keith as he slides into the space between Shiro’s thighs not so much like he owns it as like he _knows_ he owns it, radiating a contented confidence in Shiro’s affections as he leans back against Shiro’s chest. 

It’s all the quiet, deep intimacy Shiro could have wished for. He kisses the back of Keith’s head where his braid is starting to fray with end-of-the-day dishevelment and settles Keith securely against him, letting his embrace be tight, protective, possessive. 

“Hi,” he murmurs and Keith nestles in, tucking his head under Shiro’s chin. 

“I am if you’re with me,” he says, in that devastatingly straightforward way he has. 

For a moment Shiro is lost in some weird existential confusion, _tu ergo sum_ , and then he rewinds the seconds before Keith’s touch wiped his mind clean of anything else and says again, “You’re looking forward to the party?”

“Yeah,” Keith says and the only reason Shiro manages to loosen his hold is that Keith is turning in his arms, kneeling between the spread of Shiro’s thighs, Shiro’s hands settling naturally on his hips as he clasps his hands around Shiro’s neck and looks down contemplatively into his eyes. He says, “Come to the party with me. Together.”

“For the party?” Shiro says. The sky is darkening fast and his eyes prickle against the warmly fading light as he blinks up at Shiro. 

Keith says, “For everything. Shiro -” and Shiro pulls him down into a kiss. 

It’s hot and hungry for the first minute, water in the desert kisses, and then Shiro doesn’t know who gentles it but they’re touching each other slowly, a meditative feel to how their lips meet and their tongues curve together. He’d thought he’d kissed Keith a lot by now, gone through happy and horny and furious and sad, but it’s brand new all over again. Keith is cupping Shiro’s face, his hands warm and soft, and the way he’s kissing Shiro has a quiet, languid confidence, like he knows there’s going to be all the time in the world.

He can’t look at Keith, keeps his eyes closed when Keith presses their foreheads together, wraps his arms around Shiro’s neck the way Shiro’s are tight around his waist. “You’re sure?” he says, quiet. It feels too easy, too right, too good for him; he doesn’t know what he did to earn Keith in his arms like this, making promises.

“I love you,” Keith says simply. “Seeing Lance and Allura back together… he’s right. He’s lucky to have got a second chance. I already got you back twice when you were gone. I was with the Blades earlier, and I just thought, so, what, I’m gonna just get in my ship tomorrow and fly away from this? I don’t want to be apart again. We’ll figure the rest out as we go.”

“That tends to work out, when we do it together,” Shiro agrees. He opens his eyes when he feels Keith’s fingertips gentle under one, smudging away a tear. Keith is all he can see, haloed in sunset gold, content.

“I felt you,” Keith adds quietly, and Shiro turns into his palm, kisses him there. “I felt… what you feel for me. It was like -” he breaks off, shaking his head, and Shiro gets it: they can spend the rest of their lives loving each other and yet they’ll never be able to experience that pure connection again.

“Keith, I love you,” he says. Compared to the wonder of melding their minds through the lions and Atlas it’s so difficult and yet so deficient to have to talk, but Shiro knows from painful experience what silence does to a relationship; what pushing everything down and refusing to feel it does for a life. “I want this. I want to be with you. I’ll tell you every day.”

“As many times as it takes?” Keith says, smiling, and Shiro leans up for another soft press of lips. When Keith had told him that the clone had still been new enough for Haggar to have barely flexed her control; he remembers it vividly. How reassuring it had felt, how it had made him feel _safe_ , for once: Keith can be relied upon more than anyone else Shiro knows.

“As many times as it takes,” he promises, and he never knew love could be so sweet it aches. Keith’s gaze on him is intent, as open to Shiro as he hasn’t been since he was a kid, but unlike the hero worship of then the adoration in his eyes is tempered and steady, seeing Shiro for exactly what he is, loving him despite it, because of it.

The sun is down, the sky lit with the amethyst glow of Altean twilight: they’re already going to be late for the party and so Shiro runs his hand up Keith’s back to tangle in his hair, tugs him down again. 

Keith brushes their noses together before he kisses Shiro and the simple affection and intimacy of the gesture undoes Shiro completely, breaks something open in him that’s been locked tight for a very long time. 

He’s holding too hard as he kisses Keith back, he knows, but he can’t stop, and it’s okay because Keith is just the same. Keith is the same, even more, pushing further into Shiro’s arms, his hands all over Shiro’s face and shoulders and back with a greedy new possessiveness, deep kisses that have him tasting the breath out of Shiro’s mouth.

“You’re shaking,” Keith murmurs and Shiro opens his eyes, shocked to realise his eyelashes are spiky with wetness, gazes up at him. Keith was always passionate with him but now he’s kind; Shiro can feel how much he’s loved in how he’s touched, luxuriates in it, Keith’s thumb on the thin skin beneath his eyes, his lips touching the crease between Shiro’s brows with the softness of a blessing. 

“I want this,” Shiro says and his meaning this time is deliberately carnal, his hips arching, grinding his cock recklessly against the firm roundness of Keith’s ass in his lap, although its inside him where there’s the delicious clenching ache of emptiness. “I want you inside me again.”

“Oh, God,” Keith says, laughing a little, the sort of silly in love Shiro had never even dared to imagine from him. “Shiro -” and they’re kissing once more hotter and deeper and dirtier, and there’s no question of leaving now, not before they’ve ridden out this wild chemistry between them, on the open road and flooring it. If Shiro had thought sex with Keith was intense before he can feel now how wrong he was, how much higher they have to go, now that they’re really together, now they’re sure of one another. 

He leans back, lies back, Keith on top of him as easy and natural as falling, between Shiro’s thighs and against Shiro’s cock like he belongs there, the cadence of their kisses never faltering. There’s a brief moment of embarrassment about making love right here on top of the black lion, but he dismisses it: like the Atlas, she’s bonded enough to her pilot to understand, and mecha enough not to care, and breaking off long enough to climb down and find a cosy patch of grass is far too long.

He scrabbles at Keith’s t-shirt, dragging it up his back, giving in to the temptation to let his flesh hand linger on the warm smooth skin of Keith’s bared lower back, mapping out the dip there, the narrowness of his waist, dipping his fingers under Keith’s pants and finding the curve of his ass. Keith bites a little at his lower lip, making Shiro moan, digs in his knees and rises up enough to strip the shirt over his head in one spare move, his gaze fixed hot on Shiro’s mouth.

“Now you,” he says, his voice and almost gravelly, like he sounds when he’s about to push himself to new miracle in the midst of battle. Shiro pulls himself up enough to get his own t-shirt off without having to dislodge Keith from his sprawl over Shiro’s hips, chuckles, ticklish, when Keith spreads his hands over the tensed muscles of his stomach. Keith says, “God, I love your body. I love you, I want to take my time with you -”

“Later,” Shiro promises, captures Keith’s hand roaming greedily over his pecs and brings it to his mouth, kissing Keith’s fingertips before Keith leans down and their mouths crash together again, drowning kisses: Shiro feels dizzy with it, Keith’s tongue exploring his mouth at odds with the languid grind of his hips against Shiro’s. “I need you now, don’t make me wait. Show me I’m yours, baby.”

The petname slips out before Shiro can stop it; it makes the corners of Keith’s eyes crinkle with soft amusement and Shiro hunches his shoulders with a confused mix of embarrassment and earnestness. He’s always liked to be sentimental with his lovers, to tell them how he’s feeling and want the same reassuring signs of partnership back; applying that to Keith feels weird and right at the same time.

“Baby, huh?” Keith says. He presses his mouth against Shiro’s, a light tease, sits up slowly. He pushes Shiro down with a hand in the centre of his chest when Shiro tries to follow his lips, and Shiro could swear he feels his heart thudding against Keith’s palm. Keith brings his other hand to Shiro’s, pulls them both to his hips, and Shiro anchors both his hands there, feeling secure again, relaxing back into being loved. 

Keith says something in guttural Galra and Shiro frowns, vaguely understanding the parts of the word but not how they fit together. He says, “That’s…?”

“A Galran endearment? Yeah,” Keith says and Shiro gasps as Keith starts to undo the button fly of his jeans, excruciatingly slowly; remembers they’re alone on a barely-inhabited planet and lets himself cry out the way he’s always wanted to when Keith touches him, loud and needy. “It means… I don’t know, in English. Sweetheart, I think is closest. Sweetheart, Shiro, you like that? You’re so hard for me, sweetheart. You’re gonna let me fuck you.”

It makes Shiro lose his breath. The adoring way Keith calls him _sweetheart_ with the bald, bold way he says what he’s going to do to Shiro, either, both: it’s perfect, the mix of being in his body and engaging his mind that Shiro has always needed, and he lifts up to let Keith strip down his pants and underwear, manages no more than two or three slow fucks all the way into his own fist while Keith rids himself efficiently of his own, before he knocks Shiro’s hand away and lowers himself full-body onto Shiro, easy and comfortable.

“I brought -” Shiro mumbles into his mouth, thinking of the lube in his discarded pants pocket, and Keith nuzzles at him, laughs, says, “You too?” as he presses two slick fingers deep inside Shiro with familiar confidence. 

Shiro loves it, loves the feeling of opening up for him, loves how sure Keith is that he will, breathing into their kisses, slow now and thoughtful, like their mouths can’t be off of one another even while the action moves lower. “You knew I’d come?” he says, and he gives himself entirely over to instinct, lets his body move the way it wants to; he throws his arm over his head and arches up into Keith’s touch, his other hand back in the soft black waves of Keith’s hair.

“I hoped,” Keith says, vulnerable, and they’re kissing sweet and deep when he gets between Shiro’s thighs and pushes inside. Keith feels bigger than ever, hard and hungry, and it makes Shiro feel utterly open, utterly taken, as Keith moves inside him, slow, as rhythmic and natural and inevitable as waves crashing on a sun-drenched beach.

“You feel good,” he says, “love the way you fuck me,” moans and tosses his head. Keith is sliding his hands up Shiro’s forearms, warm on his skin and sensitive on his prosthetic, clasps their hands together as he nuzzles at Shiro’s throat, bites down a little; there’s going to be a bruise and Shiro loves that, wants it, for Keith to show him off. He wants them to go to the party together later hand-in-hand, wearing Keith’s marks and his sweat, wants to look for him across the crowded ballroom and find Keith looking back and smile. He wants to go back to a shared room after and have Keith slide back inside where Shiro’s still soft and wet and tender with his come, spend all night having sex, unable to keep their hands off each other, sleep in Keith’s arms in the hazy golden morning light.

“I missed you,” Keith whispers and they kiss again, messy and wet, panting. “I love you. You feel - God, like you were made for me, I’ve never - God, I want you, _Shiro_ -” and it’s a victory to make him yell, powerful and yearning, Shiro’s thighs wrapped around his waist and squeezing him inside, holding him, arching and moving against him, met and matched, Shiro’s cock grinding hard against Keith’s flat stomach between as Keith fucks him in short quick thrusts, giving it to him so fucking good.

There’s so much delirious pleasure the orgasm takes his whole body by surprise, his whole body clutching at Keith’s, feeling Keith shake and come inside him; together. 

The aftermath is sighing and kissing and looking into one another’s eyes, as Keith softens and slides out and rolls them to their sides, the kind of softness that he knows he won’t really remember after, lost in the sweet silvered fuzziness of it. 

He leans up over Keith as soon as his trembling limbs will let him, plays with his hair and presses his thumb against the pink swell of Keith’s lips, feeling the sweet things they’re saying to one another as much as hearing them. It’s a luxury, as perfection always is, and he takes as it such, sinks into it and enjoys it and lets his heart thump steady and hard, loving Keith a little bit more with every beat.

***

“We should get dressed,” Keith says eventually, reluctantly, when the sweat on their skin has dried and the night cooled enough to be getting uncomfortable. “Go to the party.”

“I suppose,” Shiro says. They’re sitting now and when he leans in Keith meets him for another long, slow kiss, acting as addicted as Shiro feels. His hands want to be on Keith’s skin; the idea of the party feels mildly offensive.

“You want to take the hoverbike back?” Keith says. He’s smiling, helplessly, joyful and beautiful, and he makes the tiniest, sexiest, most peaceful noise when Shiro tilts his chin down for a last kiss to his cupid’s bow, the tip of his nose, his forehead.

The idea of riding pillion with Keith has its attractions. Keith pressed tight to his back, his arms wrapped around Shiro’s waist, their bodies still completely in tune; Shiro can picture it, racing into their future under an alien night sky.

“Not tonight,” he says, and they kiss again, the easy way he associates with forever. “Let’s fly.”

*** END ***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... And we're done! Six months after the end of s8, I've finally exorcised all my feelings about it. I'm on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/concernedlily)!


End file.
